150+ Pages of URL Parameters - Mass Duplicate Content Issue?
-
Hi we run a large e-commerce site and while doing some checking through GWT we came across these URL parameters and are now wondering if we have a duplicate content issue.
If so, we are wodnering what is the best way to fix them, is this a task with GWT or a Rel:Canonical task?
Many of the urls are driven from the filters in our category pages and are coming up like this: page04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3F (See the image for more).
Does anyone know if these links are duplicate content and if so how should we handle them?
Richard
-
Hi Richard
Honestly, I really don't know. A lot of me wants to say that: "Surely Google will know this isn't deliberate and manipulative duplicate content". You could take a couple of those URLs and do a Google search with them. Do:
site:www.example.com/page?query1
info:www.example.com/page?query1With the first result, if your URL hasn't been indexed, that's a good thing. For the second result, if the info search returns the original URL (without the parameters), that's also good, as it means Google will be counting the one with parameters as just a variation and to be ignored. However, if it's returning the result with the parameters, that would indicate that the web crawler is indexing the version with parameters and treating it as a separate URL - raising the duplicate content risk. Silly Google!
Regardless of those results, I would look to implement the canonical tag anyway as it takes any guesswork out of the equation. And ultimately, a lot of this work with Google is guesswork as we can't see the algorithm - although it's an informed guess due to experience etc.
-
Thanks for this Tom, great answer!
So am I right in thinking that each of these URL Parameters are very likely being classed as duplicate content?
-
Along with this great answer from Tom, I just wanted to add that Google does offer a resource on duplicate content as well with tips.
Hope this helps as well - good luck!
-
Hi Richard
It is something you should address ASAP. While I believe that Google is a lot better at recognising 'accidental' duplicate content - IE URLs with URL parameters - and distinguishing it from 'deliberate' duplicate content - just outright stealing someone's work or trying to rank several pages for multiple terms - that is only my assumption. To be completely sure, let's stop any chance of Google penalising these pages.
I think, in this instance, a rel canonical tag should do the trick. You can read more on the tag here in Moz's guide. Basically, on the page(s) where you're having this problem add a "self-referring" canonical tag. For example, if the page was http://www.example.com/blue-widgets/, the tag would be:
Make sure that, when you implement this, the pages that are generated with the URL parameters aren't also creating canonical tags like:
They should all have the original canonical tag.
What this will do is tell Google that "If you see any pages with this tag, we're aware that they might be duplicate, but please only count and index the http://www.example.com/blue-widgets/". It works just like a 301 redirect in that sense.
I think this would be the simplest solution for you to implement. If you're having problems, there would be a way of blocking access to pages with certain query/URL parameters by using the robots.txt file, but that could get quite messy.
Hope this helps
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
-
Duplicate page issue
Hi, i have a serious duplicate page issue and not sure how it happened and i am not sure if anyone will be able to help as my site was built in joomla, it has been done through k2, i have never come across this issue before i am seem to have lots of duplicate pages under author names, example http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker this page is showing the full articles which is not great for seo and it is also showing that there are hundreds more articles at the bottom on the semoz tool i am using, it is showing these as duplicates although there are hundreds of them and it is causing google to see lots of duplicate pages. Diane Walker
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-2 5 1 0
Diane Walker
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-210 1 1 0
Diane Walker
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-297 1 1 0
Diane Walker
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-3 5 1 0
Diane Walker can anyone please help me to sort this important issue out.0 -
Duplicate page content
Hello, My site is being checked for errors by the PRO dashboard thing you get here and some odd duplicate content errors have appeared. Every page has a duplicate because you can see the page and the page/~username so... www.short-hairstyles.com is the same as www.short-hairstyles.com/~wwwshor I don't know if this is a problem or how the crawler found this (i'm sure I have never linked to it). But I'd like to know how to prevent it in case it is a problem if anyone knows please? Ian
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
Issue Duplicate Page Title
I'm having some really strange issues with duplicate page titles and I can't seem to figure out what's going on. I just got a new crawl from SEOMOZ and it's showing some duplicate page titles. http://www.example.com/blog/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/2/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/3/ Repeat .............. I have no idea what's going on, how these were duplicated, or how to correct it. Does anyone have a chance to take a look and see if you can figure out what's happening and what I need to do to correct the errors? I'm using Wordpress and all in one SEO plugin. Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content
Hi All, I am getting warnings about duplicate page content. The pages are normally 'tag' pages. I have some blog posts tagged with multiple 'tags'. Does it really affect my site?. I am using wordpress and Yoast SEO plugin. Thanks
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Are all duplicate pages bad?
I just got my first Crawl Report for my forum and it said I have almost 9,000 duplicate pages. When I looked at a sample of them though I saw that many of them were "reply" links. By this I mean the "reply" button was clicked for a topic yet since the crawler was not a member, it just brought them to the login/register screen. Since all the topics would bring you to the same login page I'm assuming it counted all these "reply" links as duplicates. Should I just ignore these or is there some way to fix it? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Xee0 -
Is 100% duplicate content always duplicate?
Bit of a strange question here that would be keen on getting the opinions of others on. Let's say we have a web page which is 1000 lines line, pulling content from 5 websites (the content itself is duplicate, say rss headlines, for example). Obviously any content on it's own will be viewed by Google as being duplicate and so will suffer for it. However, given one of the ways duplicate content is considered is a page being x% the same as another page, be it your own site or someone elses. In the case of our duplicate page, while 100% of the content is duplicate, the page is no more than 20% identical to another page so would it technically be picked up as duplicate. Hope that makes sense? My reason for asking is I want to pull latest tweets, news and rss from leading sites onto a site I am developing. Obviously the site will have it's own content too but also want to pull in external.
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Aspx filters causing duplicate content issues
A client has a url which is duplicated by filters on the page, for example: - http://www.example.co.uk/Home/example.aspx is duplicated by http://www.example.co.uk/Home/example.aspx?filter=3 The client is moving to a new website later this year and is using an out-of-date Kentico CMS which would need some development doing to it in order to enable implementation of rel canonical tags in the header, I don't have access to the server and they have to pay through the nose everytime they want the slightest thing altering. I am trying to resolve this duplicate content issue though and am wondering what is the best way to resolve it in the short term. The client is happy to remove the filter links from the page but that still leaves the filter urls in Google. I am concerned that a 301 redirect will cause a loop and don't understand the behaviour of this type of code enough. I hope this makes sense, any advice appreciated.
Technical SEO | | travelinnovations0