Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Duplicate URL's in Sitemap? Is that a problem?
-
I submitted a sitemap to on Search Console - but noticed that there are duplicate URLs, is that a problem for Google?
-
Hi Luciana! If Logan and/or Matthew answered your question, mind marking one or both of their responses as a "Good Answer" (down in the lower-right of the responses)? It helps us keep track of things, and it gives them a few extra MozPoints.
-
Thank you everyone!
Basically for some reason the system I used to generate the sitemap just has some (not a whole lot) of duplicate URLs, they are exact duplicates. I figured Google would just overlook that.
This was helpful!
Thanks again,
Luciana
-
Generally speaking, this isn't the worst problem you can have with your XML sitemap. In an ideal world, you'll be able to remove duplicate URLs from the sitemap and only submit a single URL for each page. In reality, most larger sites I've encountered have some amount of duplicate content in their XML sitemap with no real major problems.
Duplicate content is really only a major problem if it is "deceptive" in nature. So long as this is just a normal consequence of your CMS, or similar, vs. an attempt to game the rankings you are probably fine. For more about that check out this support article.
The other problem you may encounter is with your search results for those duplicate pages. That article makes mention that Google will pick the URL they think is best (more about that here as well) and the URL they deem the best will be the URL that surfaces in the search results. That may or may not be the same URL you or your visitors would deem best. So, what you might find is Google picked a not great URL (like one with extra parameters) and with the not great URL appearing in the SERPs, your search result isn't as compelling to click on as some other version of the URL may be.
-
Hi,
This isn't necessarily a problem, but XML sitemaps should be as clean as possible before they're uploaded. i.e., no 301'd URLs, no 404s, no dupes, no parameter'd URLs, no canonicalized, etc..
Are they duplicates in the sense that one has caps, and the other doesn't? As in /example.html and /Example.html. If so, you'll want to fix that.
If they're identically formatted URLs, there should be no problem, but you're at duplicate content risk if they're different in anyway and not canonicalized.
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
-
Will shortening down the amount of text on my pages affect it's SEO performance?
My website has several pages with a lot of text that becomes pretty boring. I'm looking at shortening down the amount of copy on each page but then within the updated, shortened copy, integrating more target keywords naturally. Will shortening down the current copy have a negative effect on my SEO performance?
On-Page Optimization | | Liquid20150 -
Duplicate Content with ?Page ID's in WordPress
Hi there, I'm trying to figure out the best way to solve a duplicate content problem that I have due to Page ID's that WordPress automatically assigns to pages. I know that in order for me to resolve this I have to use canonical urls but the problem for me is I can't figure out the URL structure. Moz is showing me thousands of duplicate content errors that are mostly related to Page IDs For example, this is how a page's url should look like on my site Moz is telling me there are 50 duplicate content errors for this page. The page ID for this page is 82 so the duplicate content errors appear as follows and so on. For 47 more pages. The problem repeats itself with other pages as well. My permalinks are set to "Post Name" so I know that's not an issue. What can I do to resolve this? How can I use canonical URLs to solve this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | SpaMedica0 -
Two URL's for the same page
Hi, on our site we have two separate URL's for a page that has the same content. So, for example - 'www.domain.co.uk/stuff' and 'www.domain.co.uk/things/stuff' both have the same content on the page. We currently rank high in search for 'www.domain.co.uk/things/stuff' for our targeted keyword, but there are numerous links on the site to www.domain.co.uk/stuff and also potentially inbound links to this page. Ideally we want just the www.domain.co.uk/things/stuff URL to be present on the site, what would be the best course of action to take? Would a simple Canonical tag from the '/stuff' URL which points to the '/things/stuff' page be wise? If we were to scrap the '/stuff' URL totally and redirect it to the 'things/stuff' URL and change all our on site links, would this be beneficial and not harm our current ranking for '/things/stuff'? We only want 1 URL for this page for numerous reasons (i.e, easier to track in Analytics), but I'm a bit cautious that changing the page that doesn't rank may have an affect on the page that does rank! Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Jaybeamer2 -
Duplicate content on partner site
I have a trade partner who will be using some of our content on their site. What's the best way to prevent any duplicate content issues? Their plan is to attribute the content to us using rel=author tagging. Would this be sufficient or should I request that they do something else too? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ShearingsGroup0 -
URL for location pages
Hello all We would like to create clean, easy URLs for our large list of Location pages. If there are a few URLs for each of the pages, am I right when I'm saying we would like this to be the canonical? Right now we would like the URL to be: For example
On-Page Optimization | | Ferguson
Domain.com/locations/Columbus I have found some instances where there might be 2,3 or more locations in the same city,zip. My conclusion for these would be: adding their Branch id's on to the URL
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/0304 Is this an okay approach? We are unsure if the URL should have city,State,zip for SEO purposes?
The pages will have all of this info in it's content
BUT what would be best for SEO and ranking for a given location? Thank you for any info!0 -
Has anyone had experience with the Wix platform and it's SEO qualities?
Wix offers an inexpensive, user friendly platform for building websites. Most of the site is flash, but Wix claims to be SEO friendly. I'm all ears for your feedback and experience with Wix.
On-Page Optimization | | ksracer0 -
Submitting multiple sitemaps
I recently moved over from html to wordpress. I have the google sitemap plugin on the new wordpress site, but in webmaster tools, it's only showing 71 pages, and I have hundreds, but many are html. Is it okay, to submit an html sitemap as well as the wp sitemap that's already in there?
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0 -
Post Title - Use the blog's name or not?
In the tile of my post, shoudl I used my blog's name in it at the end or emit the blog name. EX: title of post with keywords | name of blog OR EX: title of post with keywords The site's name is 3 words long, so I'm worrying that those extra words are diluting the keywords in the post's name that I'm trying to target.
On-Page Optimization | | gregalam0