URLs: Removing duplicate pages using anchor?
-
I've been working on removing duplicate content on our website. There are tons of pages created based on size but the content is the same.
The solution was to create a page with 90% static content and 10% dynamic, that changed depending on the "size" Users can select the size from a dropdown box.
So instead of 10 URLs, I now have one URL.
- Users can access a specific size by adding an anchor to the end of the URL (?f=suze1, ?f=size2)
For e.g:
Old URLs.
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size2
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size3
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size4
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size5
New URLs
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size2
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size3
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size4
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size5
Do search engines read the anchor or drop them? Will the rank juice be transfered to just www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?
-
Thanks Everett,
- Rel="canonical" is in place, so that's covered
- The urls with the parameter are only accessible if you want to directly access a particular size. If you are on the default page and switch sizes from the dropdown, no URL change is presented.
- I have left webmaster to decide what should be crawled or not. The parameter has been mentioned though.
-
Cyto,
The Google Webmaster Tools parameter handling, in my opinion, is often best left up to Google. In other words, I rarely change it. Instead, I try to fix the issue itself. In your case, here is what I would advise:
Instead of using a parameter in the URL, use cookies or hidden divs to change the content on the page to the different size. Have a look at most major online retailers. You can select a size or color from the drop down and it never changes the URL.
If this is not possible, I recommend the following:
Ensure the rel = "canonical" tag on all of those pages references the canonical version (e.g. /product-alpha-size1) which will consolidate the link-related metrics like PageRank into the one page.
-
Please say YES
-
Thank you Celilcan2,
- I'll set it up as 'yes' and it 'narrows' the page
- What is the perk of doing this though? Will Google not count anything after the parameter as something or value, it would focus on just the single URL?
-
Go to google webmaster tools
- On the Dashboard, under Crawl, click URL Parameters.
- Next to the parameter you want, click Edit. (If the parameter isn’t listed, click Add parameter. Note that this tool is case sensitive, so be sure to type your parameter exactly as it appears in your URL.)
- If the parameter doesn't affect the content displayed to the user, select **No ... **in the Does this parameter change... list, and then click Save. If the parameter does affect the display of content, click Yes: Changes, reorders, or narrows page content, and then select how you want Google to crawl URLs with this parameter.
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
-
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Do I use H1 tag for logo or page content?
Should the h1 tag be used for the main page content or the logo? I understand the original method was too H1 the logo with the main search term, does this still hold true or should it be content focused?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Removing duplicate content
Due to URL changes and parameters on our ecommerce sites, we have a massive amount of duplicate pages indexed by google, sometimes up to 5 duplicate pages with different URLs. 1. We've instituted canonical tags site wide. 2. We are using the parameters function in Webmaster Tools. 3. We are using 301 redirects on all of the obsolete URLs 4. I have had many of the pages fetched so that Google can see and index the 301s and canonicals. 5. I created HTML sitemaps with the duplicate URLs, and had Google fetch and index the sitemap so that the dupes would get crawled and deindexed. None of these seems to be terribly effective. Google is indexing pages with parameters in spite of the parameter (clicksource) being called out in GWT. Pages with obsolete URLs are indexed in spite of them having 301 redirects. Google also appears to be ignoring many of our canonical tags as well, despite the pages being identical. Any ideas on how to clean up the mess?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Duplicate keyphrases in page titles = penalty?
Hello Mozzers - just looking at a website which has duplicate keyphrases in its page titles... So you have [keyphrase 1] | [exact match Keyphrase 1] Now I happen to know this particular site has suffered a dramatic fall in traffic - the SEO agency working on the site had advised the client to duplicate keyphrases. Hard to believe, huh! What I'm wondering is whether this extensive exact match keyphrase duplication might've been enough to attract a penalty? Your thoughts would be welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Using unique content from "rel=canonical"ized page
Hey everyone, I have a question about the following scenario: Page 1: Text A, Text B, Text C Page 2 (rel=canonical to Page 1): Text A, Text B, Text C, Text D Much of the content on page 2 is "rel=canonical"ized to page 1 to signalize duplicate content. However, Page 2 also contains some unique text not found in Page 1. How safe is it to use the unique content from Page 2 on a new page (Page 3) if the intention is to rank Page 3? Does that make any sense? 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
Best way to remove low quality paginated search pages
I have a website that has around 90k pages indexed, but after doing the math I realized that I only have around 20-30k pages that are actually high quality, the rest are paginated pages from search results within my website. Every time someone searches a term on my site, that term would get its own page, which would include all of the relevant posts that are associated with that search term/tag. My site had around 20k different search terms, all being indexed. I have paused new search terms from being indexed, but what I want to know is if the best route would be to 404 all of the useless paginated pages from the search term pages. And if so, how many should I remove at one time? There must be 40-50k paginated pages and I am curious to know what would be the best bet from an SEO standpoint. All feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Does duplicate content penalize the whole site or just the pages affected?
I am trying to assess the impact of duplicate content on our e-commerce site and I need to know if the duplicate content is affecting only the pages that contain the dupe content or does it affect the whole site? In Google that is. But of course. Lol
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
What are your thoughts on using Dripable, VitaRank, or similar service to build URL links too dilute link profile???
One of my sites has a very spamy link profile, top 20 anchors are money keywords. What are your thoughts on using Dripable, VitaRank, or similar service to help dilute the link profile by building links with URLs, Click Here, more Info, etc. I have been building URL links already, but due to the site age(over 12 years) the amount of exact match anchor text links is just very large and would take forever to get diluted.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 858-SEO0