URL paramters and duplicate content
-
Hello,
I have a 2-fold question:
- Crawl Diagnostics is picking up a lot of Duplicate Page Title errors, and as far as I can tell, all of them are cause by URL parameters trailing the URL.
We use a Magento store, and all filtering attributes, categories, product pages etc are tagged on as URL parameters.
example:
Main URL:
/accessories.htmlDuplicated Title Page URLs:
/accessories.html?dir=asc&order=position
/accessories.html?mode=list
/accessories.html?mode=grid
...and many othersHow can I make the Crawl Diagnostics not identify these as errors?
- Now from an SEO point of view, all these URL parameters are been picked up by google, and are listed in WedMaster Tools -> URL parameters.
All URL parameters are set to "let google decide".
I remember having read that Google was smart enough here to make the right decision, and we shouldn't have to worry about it.
Is this true, or is there a larger issue at hand here?
Thankas!
-
I'm going to look into our canonical tags first - I think this is the best place to start.
Once this is done, I'll wait a week and see if the next scan yields fewer errors.
I'll keep you posted. Thanks.
-
Hi yacpro13. We had a similar problem. We aren't on Magento, but definitely we had the same issue. For us it was a combination of several things. Make sure that your canonical tags are squared away In our case, we had a program running that was automatically writing canonical tags that matched these URLs with the URL parameters attached. Eventually we stopped using the parameters completely, but by then many of these pages had already been indexed (even though they weren't technically separate pages, Google saw them as such). No, Google definitely wasn't smart enough to decide. In our case, Google had sometimes indexed 4-5 versions of the same identical page, and of course we were getting dinged for having duplicate content.
Because we aren't using the parameters any more our solution was to ask Google to remove those URLs from the index. This is a painfully long process for a big site. We've already submitted over 500 remove requests and only about 1/2 have been completed. In your case, since it appears you are currently using parameters, this may not be the best solution. I would start with the canonical tags and investigate those and make sure they aren't part of the problem.
Good luck. Hope this helps a tiny bit.
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
-
New URL, new physical address, New Name. 30 point drop in Domain Authority. Yikes.
I have a client who is asking for SEO help after renaming their business, getting a new URL, and somehow having an address change (without moving to a new location...weird...I know). This has set them back big time in terms of their domain authority (they went from a 46 to a 15 in DA). The web developers they work with put a 302 redirect in place from their old URL (home page), which had 10,477 links from 52 root domains, to their new URL's home page. Open site explorer shows that they now have 5 links! We can improve some of the local search set backs from the name and address change with a citation audit and clean up, but the domain name change is a killer. So here's my question or questions, really: Do we need to manually rebuild links with partner websites? I know there is debate around the actual link juice passed along from a 302 vs a 301 redirect (despite what has been publicly stated by Google). Or is this just a waiting game while old links get recrawled?
Moz Pro | | TheKatzMeow1 -
No more than one canonical url Tag.
I just got the "no more than one canonical url TAG" for this page http://www.vacuumadvisers.com/1/electrolux-ultra-active-deep-clean-bagless-canister-vacuum-cleaner-review. I have no idea how to Fix that. Tried google it but none for Tag in particular. PS. I have changed the Theme recently therefore so did the URL Anyone?
Moz Pro | | bishop230 -
Which URL to use for my campaign?
My outdated CMS redirects from a clean url root domain to an ugly url. Should I use the ugly one to start a my campaign? So when you type in www.site.com it redirects to www.site.com/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.5699537/k.BEF4/Home.htm Should I use the url it redirects to when starting a campaign?
Moz Pro | | mstanwyck0 -
Duplicate content due to "Email a Friend" and "PhotoGallery"
Crawl Diagnostics gives me 1650 duplicate page content errors. 800+ are for photo gallery, the link upon which my large image is shown. 800+ are for the Email a Friend form page. Presumably SEOMoz's tool is getting there by following the link inside a product page, which as you can see will differ only by the ProductCode of every product.
Moz Pro | | jotham2
www.completemobilehomesupply.com/PhotoGallery.asp?ProductCode=anchor101
www.completemobilehomesupply.com/EmailaFriend.asp?ProductCode=Shutter001 1 - Is it critical to fix?
I am assuming Yes, but if for some reason the answer is No, please share. 2 - Any idea on how to fix?
The site uses Volusion, fyi, so it may be a limiting factor of the platform. Thank you for your time.
Also if this topic has been previously covered, please link and I'll read there instead.0 -
Will canonical tag get rid of duplicate page title errors?
I have a directory on my website, paginated in groups of 10. On page 2 of the results, the title tag is the same as the first page, as it is on the 3rd page and so on. This is giving me duplicate page title errors. If i use rel=canonical tags on the subsequent pages and href the first page of my results, will my duplicate page title warnings go away? thanks.
Moz Pro | | fourthdimensioninc0 -
Can overly dynamic URLs be overcome with canonical meta tags?
I tried searching for questions regarding dynamic URLs and canonical tags, but I couldn't find anything s hopefully this hasn't been covered. There are a large number of overly dynamic URLs reported in our site crawl (>7,000). I haven't looked at each of these, but most of these either have a canonical meta tag or have are indicated as FOLLOW, NO INDEX pages. Will these be enough to overcome any negative SEO impact that may come from overly dynamic URLs? We are down to almost 0 critical errors and this is now the biggest problem reported by the site crawl after too many on page links.
Moz Pro | | afmaury0 -
My crawl diagnostic is showing 2 duplicate content and titles.
First of all Hi - My name is Jason and I've just joined - How you all doing? My 1st question then: When I view where these errors are occurring it says www mydomain co uk and www mydomain co uk/index.html Isn't this the same page? I have looked into my root folder and only index.html exists.
Moz Pro | | JasonHegarty0 -
Solving duplicate content errors for what is effectively the same page.
Hello,
Moz Pro | | jcarter
I am trying out your SEOMOZ and I quite like it. I've managed to remove most of the errors on my site however I'm not sure how to get round this last one. If you look at my errors you will see most of them revolve around things like this: http://www.containerpadlocks.co.uk/categories/32/dead-locks
http://www.containerpadlocks.co.uk/categories/32/dead-locks?PageSize=9999 These are essentially the same pages because the category for Dead Locks does not contain enough products to view over more than one resulting in the fact that when I say 'View all products' on my webpage, the results are the same. This functionality works with categories with more than the 20 per page limit. My question is, should I be either: Removing the link to 'show all products' (which adds the PageSize query string value) if no more products will be shown. Or putting a no-index meta tag on the page? Or some other action entirely? Looking forward to your reply and you showing how effective Pro is. Many Thanks,
James Carter0