Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Duplicate content on URL trailing slash

    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 content on URL trailing slash

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    6
    10039
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • yacpro13
      yacpro13 Subscriber last edited by

      Hello,

      Some time ago, we accidentally made changes to our site which modified the way urls in links are generated. At once, trailing slashes were added to many urls (only in links).

      Links that used to send to
      example.com/webpage.html

      Were now linking to
      example.com/webpage.html/

      Urls in the xml sitemap remained unchanged (no trailing slash).

      We started noticing duplicate content (because our site renders the same page with or without the trailing shash). We corrected the problematic php url function so that now, all links on the site link to a url without trailing slash.

      However, Google had time to index these pages. Is implementing 301 redirects required in this case?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • BlueprintMarketing
        BlueprintMarketing @yacpro13 last edited by

        Yes you want to have it match the canonical tag so most effective method is to 301 redirect so they match the canonical tag site map and robots.txt etc.  You can use a Regex code like this at the end of the URL /?$ in the case of category URLs it will allow them when needed.

        if you use the proper 301 you will not have to deal with the category issue anyway.

        rel="canonical" href="https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-on-url-trailing-slash" />

        I hope this is able to shed more light on the issue and great answer Eric.

        Hope I was of help,

        Tom

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
        • yacpro13
          yacpro13 Subscriber @GlobeRunner last edited by

          Hi Eric,

          I was at Step 3 of your 3 Step plan, looking for confirmation as to whether or not the 301 redirects were required in this situation.

          Thanks!

          BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MattRoney
            MattRoney last edited by

            Hi yacpro13! Did Eric or Thomas answer your question, and if so, would you mind marking one or both responses as a "Good Answer?" 🙂

            Otherwise, what questions do you still have?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • GlobeRunner
              GlobeRunner last edited by

              If you have changed the URLs with trailing slashes, then there are a few things you'll want to do:

              • make sure all the internal links on your site are updated to point to the proper version.

              • make sure that the sitemap.xml file(s) are correct, pointing to the proper version.

              • set up 301 permanent redirects so that the ones with the slash are redirecting to the old URLs.

              As long as you have corrected the links internally, updated the sitemap file, and set up the 301 redirects, everything should go "back to normal" within a fairly short period of time. You will need to give it time, though, as Google will need to re-crawl all of those URLs and get it all ironed out.

              yacpro13 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
              • BlueprintMarketing
                BlueprintMarketing last edited by

                I have provided the Apache and Nginx configurations you would need in addition to a URL that will convert

                Apache Htaccess to Nginx

                The instructions are right here

                Remove Trailing Slash

                Just like with the WWW example, some prefer to remove the trailing slash. It's a commonly debated question that you'll find around the Internet, but it just depends on what you prefer.

                Remember, though, your browser and even your server, by default, add a trailing slash to a directory. It is done for a reason. If you must strip the trailing slash, though, this is how you would do it:

                <code class="hljs apache">RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)$
                RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]</code>
                

                For Nginx

                nginx configuration location ~ (.)$ { } location / { if (!-e $request_filename){ rewrite ^(.)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 redirect; } }

                The explanation for this rule is the same as it is for when we want to add a trailing slash, just in reverse. We can also specify specific directories that we don't want apply this rule over.

                <code class="hljs apache">RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !directory/(.*)$
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)$
                RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]</code>
                

                For Nginx

                nginx configuration location ~ directory/(.)$ { } location ~ (.)$ { } location / { if (!-e $request_filename){ rewrite ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 redirect; } }

                Please see the note about mod_dir and the DirectorySlash directive in the previous example. You might need to turn this directive off.

                HTaccess converter for Apache to Nginx configuration.

                http://winginx.com/en/htaccess

                https://www.maxcdn.com/one/tutorial/remove-trailing-slash/

                https://www.crucialhosting.com/knowledgebase/htaccess-apache-rewrites-examples

                https://moz.com/community/q/how-to-remove-trailing-slashes-in-urls-using-htaccess-apache

                https://gist.github.com/nathos/4645164

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • ajiabs

                  Duplicate content due to parked domains

                  I have a main ecommerce website with unique content and decent back links. I had few domains parked on the main website as well specific product pages. These domains had some type in traffic. Some where exact product names.  So main main website www.maindomain.com had domain1.com , domain2.com parked on it. Also had domian3.com parked on www.maindomain.com/product1. This caused lot of duplicate content issues. 12 months back, all the parked domains were changed to 301 redirects. I also added all the domains to google webmaster tools. Then removed main directory from google index. Now realize few of the additional domains are indexed and causing duplicate content. My question is what other steps can I take to avoid the duplicate content for my my website 1. Provide change of address in Google search console. Is there any downside in providing change of address pointing to a website? Also domains pointing to a specific url , cannot provide change of address 2. Provide a remove page from google index request in Google search console. It is temporary and last 6 months. Even if the pages are removed from Google index, would google still see them duplicates? 3. Ask google to fetch each url under other domains and submit to google index. This would hopefully remove the urls under domain1.com and doamin2.com eventually due to 301 redirects. 4. Add canonical urls for all pages in the main site. so google will eventually remove content from doman1 and domain2.com due to canonical links. This wil take time for google to update their index 5. Point these domains elsewhere to remove duplicate contents eventually. But it will take time for google to update their index with new non duplicate content. Which of these options are best best to my issue and which ones are potentially dangerous? I would rather not to point these domains elsewhere. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ajiabs
                  0
                • marcandre

                  Woocommerce SEO & Duplicate content?

                  Hi Moz fellows, I'm new to Woocommerce and couldn't find help on Google about certain SEO-related things. All my past projects were simple 5 pages websites + a blog, so I would just no-index categories, tags and archives to eliminate duplicate content errors. But with Woocommerce Product categories and tags, I've noticed that many e-Commerce websites with a high domain authority actually rank for certain keywords just by having their category/tags indexed. For example keyword 'hippie clothes' = etsy.com/category/hippie-clothes (fictional example) The problem is that if I have 100 products and 10 categories & tags on my site it creates THOUSANDS of duplicate content errors, but If I 'non index' categories and tags they will never rank well once my domain authority rises... Anyone has experience/comments about this? I use SEO by Yoast plugin. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance. -Marc

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcandre
                  1
                • MozAddict

                  Magento Trailing Slash URL Problem

                  Howdy Mozzers! Our magento store URL's are accessible with or without a trailing slash at the end. Canonical's and 301 redirects are not set up for one of them at the moment. Will this cause duplicate issue? Do we need to set canonical or 301 up? Which one is recommended? MozAddict

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict
                  0
                • Mark_Ch

                  URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links

                  Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
                  0
                • WebbyNabler

                  Duplicate Content From Indexing of non- File Extension Page

                  Google somehow has indexed a page of mine without the .html extension.  so they indexed  www.samplepage.com/page, so I am showing duplicate content because Google also see's  www.samplepage.com/page.html   How can I force google or bing or whoever to only index and see the page including the .html extension?  I know people are saying not to use the file extension on pages, but I want to, so please anybody...HELP!!!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebbyNabler
                  0
                • irvingw

                  Is SEOmoz.org creating duplicate content with their CDN subdomain?

                  Example URL: http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions Canonical is a RELATIVE link, should be an absolute link pointing to main domain: http://www.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions <link href='[/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions)' rel='<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>' /> 13,400 pages indexed in Google under cdn subdomain go to google   >  site:http://cdn.seomoz.org https://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&oq=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&gs_l=hp.2...986.6227.0.6258.28.14.0.0.0.5.344.3526.2-10j2.12.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.Uprw7ko7jnU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=97577626a0fb6a97&biw=1920&bih=936

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw
                  1
                • Byron_W

                  Duplicate Content on Wordpress b/c of Pagination

                  On my recent crawl, there were a great many duplicate content penalties.  The site is http://dailyfantasybaseball.org. The issue is: There's only one post per page.  Therefore, because of wordpress's (or genesis's) pagination, a page gets created for every post, thereby leaving basically every piece of content i write as a duplicate. I feel like the engines should be smart enough to figure out what's going on, but if not, I will get hammered. What should I do moving forward? Thanks!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Byron_W
                  0
                • YNWA

                  Duplicate Content on Press Release?

                  Hi, We recently held a charity night in store. And had a few local celebs turn up etc... We created a press release to send out to various media outlets, within the press release were hyperlinks to our site and links on certain keywords to specific brands on our site. My question is, should we be sending a different press release to each outlet to stop the duplicate content thing, or is sending the same release out to everyone ok? We will be sending approx 20 of these out, some going online and some not. So far had one local paper website, a massive football website and a local magazine site. All pretty much same content and a few pics. Any help, hints or tips on how to go about this if I am going to be sending out to a load of other sites/blogs? Cheers

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.