Www.xyz.com v/s xyz.com creating duplicate pages
-
I just put my site in moz analytics. The crawl results says I have duplicate content. When I look at the pages it is because one page is www.xyz.com and the duplicate is xyz.com. What causes this and how can it be fixed. I'm not a developer, so be kind and speak a language I can understand.
Thanks for your help
-
Hi Viresh,
The 301 redirect option is perfect, and so is using the canonical tag to point one "version" of the site to the other if you would rather do that - instructions for doing that are here. Just make sure, as you would with the redirect, the the canonical tag points on a page-by-page basis. That is, xyz.com/page31.html has a canonical tag on it pointing to www.xyz.com/page31.html, not to www.xyz.com/.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Yes, when you setup a website normally, this will usually be a default issue that needs to be addressed. It's an overall problem (though easy to fix) that has yet to be addressed. So, no, it's not your fault -- but it's on you and every other site owner to fix it.
-
The 'default' setup will be for no redirects to be in place. It's not that something was done incorrectly, but rather, a best practice for SEO was overlooked. It's not something your average Joe or webmaster with no SEO experience is likely going to.
-
I don't currently know which one is linked to more often. I will look into that. Thanks for that little tip and your fast response.
-
I get that!! Does this happen when a site is built? Does it just happen by default, or was something not done correctly when the site was built?
Thanks for your quick response
-
In your scenario, you will want to choose one or the other, and setup a force WWW (or non-WWW) 301 redirect. If your site is on a linux-based platform, that is accomplished with an htaccess file. If you are on a Windows-based server, you will need to use IIS (I think). A simple Google search for "force www redirect windows server" will likely return tons of solutions.
If you're on Wordpress or a similar CMS, it is usually very easy to do from within the backend. If you have no idea what server you're on, or what platform your site is built on, use builtwith.com to find out
How do you choose between www.example.com or just example.com? You'll want to go with the one that's linked to more often, and then work on sticking with that as often as possible in the future. The majority of the link juice that's pointing towards example.com will be transfered to www.example.com with the 301 redirect, so it's not like those links without WWW will be worthless. They only lose a very tiny amount of their value through the redirect. The good news is, you're fixing a big issue so it isn't going to get worse for you.
Let me know if you have more questions.
-
I hope this isn't too technical, but just do a 301 redirect from either www.xyz.com to xyz.com or vice versa (your choice) for all pages on your website. That should solve the issue! (You can and should also set one of those as the canonical domain in Google Webmaster Tools.)
If that doesn't make sense, just reply!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Technical SEO | | h.hedayati6712365410 -
Nofollow/Noindex Category Listing Pages with Filters
Our e-commerce site currently has thousands of duplicate pages indexed because category listing pages with all the different filters selected are indexed. So, for example, you would see indexed: example.com/boots example.com/boots/black example.com/boots/black-size-small etc. There is a logic in place that when more than one filter is selected all the links on the page are nofollowed, but Googlebot is still getting to them, and the variations are being indexed. At this point I'd like to add 'noindex' or canonical tags to the filtered versions of the category pages, but many of these filtered pages are driving traffic. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | fayfr0 -
How bad is it to have duplicate content across http:// and https:// versions of the site?
A lot of pages on our website are currently indexed on both their http:// and https:// URLs. I realise that this is a duplicate content problem, but how major an issue is this in practice? Also, am I right in saying that the best solution would be to use rel canonical tags to highlight the https pages as the canonical versions?
Technical SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect?
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect? If this scenario requires a 301 redirect no matter what, I might as well update the URL to be a little more keyword rich for the page while I'm at it. However, since these pages are ranking well I'd rather not lose any authority in the process and keep the URL just stripped of the ".html" (if that's possible). Thanks for you help! [edited for formatting]
Technical SEO | | Booj0 -
Canonical tag for Home page: with or without / at the end???
Setting up canonical tags for an old site. I really need advice on that darn backslash / at the end of the homepage URL. We have incoming links to the homepage as http://www.mysite.com (without the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/ (with the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/index.html I know that there should be 301 redirects to just one version, but I need to know more about the canonical tags... Which should the canonical tag be??? (without the backslash) or (with the backslash) Thanks for your help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
/forum/ or /hookah-forum/
I'm building a new website on Hookah.org. It will have a forum and blog. Should I put them in Hookah.org/hookah-forum/ and Hookah.com/hookah-blog/ or Hookah.org/forum and Hookah.org/blog I think /forum/ and /blog/ are easier for users but am not sure how much adding the word hookah helps with SEO.
Technical SEO | | Heydarian0 -
Duplicate Page Titles and %3E, how can I avoid this?
In my crawl report I keep seeing duplicate page title warning with URL's being referenced twice: e.g. /company/ceo-message/ /company/ceo-message/%3E I'm using canonical link tags but after the new crawl report, I'm still seeing this duplicate page title crawl error. How can I avoid this? I've been looking for answers for a few days but don't seem to see this exact problem discussed. Any insight is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | mxmo0 -
Business/Personal Blog Duplicate Content
Quick Question. I am in the process of launching a new website for my IT business which will include a blog. I also want to start up my personal blog again. I want to publish some blog posts to both my business and personal blogs but I don't want to have any duplicate content issues. I am not concerned with building the SERPs of my personal blog but I am very focused on the business blog/site. I am looking for some ideas of how I can publish content to both sites without getting hurt by duplicate content. Again, I am not concerned with building up the placement of my personal site but I do want to have a strong personal site that helps build my name. Any help on this would be great. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ZiaTG0