Duplicate content warning: Same page but different urls???
-
Hi guys i have a friend of mine who has a site i noticed once tested with moz that there are 80 duplicate content warnings, for instance
Page 1 is http://yourdigitalfile.com/signing-documents.html
the warning page is http://www.yourdigitalfile.com/signing-documents.html
another example
Page 1 http://www.yourdigitalfile.com/
same second page http://yourdigitalfile.com
i noticed that the whole website is like the nealry every page has another version in a different url?, any ideas why they dev would do this, also the pages that have received the warnings are not redirected to the newer pages you can go to either one???
thanks very much
-
Thanks Tim. Do you have any examples of what those problems might be? With such a large catalog managing those rel canonical tags will be difficult (I don't even know if the store allows them, it's a hosted store solution and little code customization is allowed).
-
Hi there AspenFasteners, in this instance rather than a .HTAccess rule I would suggest applying a rel canonical tag which points to the page you deem as the original master source.
Using the robots to try and hide things could potentially cause you more issues as your categories may struggle to be indexed correctly.
-
We have a similar problem, but much more complex to handle as we have a massive catalog of 80,000 products and growing.
The problem occurs legitimately because our catalog is so large that we offer different navigation paths to the same content.
http://www.aspenfasteners.com/Self-Tapping-Sheet-Metal-s/8314.htm
http://www.aspenfasteners.com/Self-Tapping-Sheet-Metal-s/8315.htm
(If you look at the "You are here" breadcrumb trail, you will see the subtle differences in the navigation paths, with 8314.htm, the user went through Home > Screws, with 8315.htm, via Home > Security Fasteners > Screws).
Our hosted web store does not offer us htaccess, so I am thinking of excluding the redundant navigation points via robots.txt.
My question: is there any reason NOT to do this?
-
Oh ok
The only reason i was thinking it is duplicate content is the warnings i got on the moz crawl, see below.
75 Duplicate Page Content
6 4xx Client Error
5 Duplicate Page Title
44 Missing Meta Description Tag
5 Title Element is Too Short
I have found over 80 typos, grammatical errors, punctuation errors and incorrect information which was leading me to believe the quality of the work and their attention to detail was rather bad, which is why i thought this was a possibility.
Thanks again for your time
its really appreciated
-
I wouldn't say that they have created two pages, it is just that because you have two versions of the domain and not set a preferred version that you are getting it indexing twice. .HTaccess changes are under the hood of the website and could have simply been an oversight.
-
Hey Tim
Thanks for your answer. It's really weird, other than lazyness on the devs part not to remove old or previous versions of pages?, have you any idea why they would create multiple versions of the same page with different url's?? is there any legit reason like ones severs mobile or something??
Just wondering
thanks for replying
-
OK, so in this instance the only issue you have is that you need to choose your preferred start point - www or non www.
I would add a bit of code to your htaccess file to point to your preferred choice. I personally prefer a www. domain. Something like the below would work.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]As your site is already indexed I would also for the time being and as more of a safety measure add canonicals to the pages that point to the www. version of your site.
Also if you have a Google Search Console account, you can select your prefered domain prefix in there. this will again help with your indexation.
Hopefully I have covered most things.
Cheers
Tim
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
-
Are bloggs published on blog platforms and on our own site be considered duplicate content?
Hi, SEO wizards! My company has a company blog on Medium (https://blog.scratchmm.com/). Recently, we decided to move it to our own site to drive more traffic to our domain (https://scratchmm.com/blog/). We re-published all Medium blogs to our own website. If we keep the Medium blog posts, will this be considered duplicate content and will our website rankings we affected in any way? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
URL disappeared from the search results
Hey folks, A URL on my webpage that has been climbing in search results ever since has suddenly completely disapeared from the search results and i'm absolutely stuck - no idea what the reason might be. It was ranked #11 for the targeted keyword, than it slightly started dropping down to #14 and #17 after which it completely disappeared, not only for specific targeted keyword, but also for exact name of the product. The URL has vanished from search results. I looked in search console, no particular errors or messages from Google. The only case I might come with is that many URLs are cannonicaly linked to the URL in matter, but i don't assume this might be the case. Does anyone have a suggestion what might the reason why the URL has completely vanished from the search results? Thank you a lot. The URL: http://chemometec.com/cell-counters/cell-counter-nc-200-nucleocounter/ Targeted keyword: 'cell counter'
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Chemometec0 -
Creating pages as exact match URL's - good or over-optimization indicator?
We all know that exact match domains are not getting the same results in the SERP's with the algo changes Google's been pushing through. Does anyone have any experience or know if that also applies to having an exact match URL page (not domain). Example:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lidush
keyword: cars that start with A Which way to go is better when creating your pages on a non-exact domain match site: www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-a/ that has "cars that start with A" as the or www.sample.com/starts-with-a/ again has "cars that start with A" as the Keep in mind that you'll add more pages that start the exact same way as you want to cover all the letters in the alphabet. So: www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-a/
www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-b/
www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-C/ or www.sample.com/starts-with-a/
www.sample.com/starts-with-b/
www.sample.com/starts-with-c/ Hope someone here at the MOZ community can help out. Thanks so much0 -
Pagination for Search Results Pages: Noindex/Follow, Rel=Canonical, Ajax Best Option?
I have a site with paginated search result pages. What I've done is noindex/follow them and I've placed the rel=canonical tag on page2, page3, page4, etc pointing back to the main/first search result page. These paginated search result pages aren't visible to the user (since I'm not technically selling products, just providing different images to the user), and I've added a text link on the bottom of the first/main search result page that says "click here to load more" and once clicked, it automatically lists more images on the page (ajax). Is this a proper strategy? Also, for a site that does sell products, would simply noindexing/following the search results/paginated pages and placing the canonical tag on the paginated pages pointing back to the main search result page suffice? I would love feedback on if this is a proper method/strategy to keep Google happy. Side question - When the robots go through a page that is noindexed/followed, are they taking into consideration the text on those pages, page titles, meta tags, etc, or are they only worrying about the actual links within that page and passing link juice through them all?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Google Sitemaps & punishment for bad URLS?
Hoping y'all have some input here. This is along story, but I'll boil it down: Site X bought the url of Site Y. 301 redirects were added to direct traffic (and help transfer linkjuice) from urls in Site X to relevant urls in Site Y, but 2 days before a "change of address" notice was submitted in Google Webmaster Tools, an auto-generating sitemap somehow applied urls from Site Y to the sitemap of Site X, so essentially the sitemap contained urls that were not the url of Site X. Is there any documentation out there that Google would punish Site X for having essentially unrelated urls in its sitemap by downgrading organic search rankings because it may view that mistake as black hat (or otherwise evil) tactics? I suspect this because the site continues to rank well organically in Yahoo & Bing, yet is nonexistent on Google suddenly. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RUNNERagency0 -
"take care about the content" is it always true?
Hi everyone, I keep reading answer ,in reference to ranking advice, in wich the verdict is always the same: "TAKE CARE ABOUT THE CONTENT INSTEAD OF PR", and phrases like " you don't have to waste your time buying links, you have first of all to engage your visitors. ideally it works but not when you have to deal with small sites and especially when you are going to be ranked for those keywords where there's not too much to write. i'll give you an example still unsolved: i've got a client who just want to be ranked first for his flagship store, now his site is on the fourth position and the first ranked is a site with no content and low authority but it has the excact keyword match domain. tell me!!! what kind of content should i produce in order to be ranked for the name of the shop and the city?? the only way is to get links.... or to stay forth..... if you would like to help me, see more details below: page: http://poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it keyword: poltrona frau brescia competitor ranked first: http://turra.poltronafraubrescia.it/ competiror ranked second: http:// poltronafraubrescia.com/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | guidoboem0 -
How does someone rank page one on google for one domain for over 150 keywords?
A local seo is exclaiming his fantastic track record for a pool company(amonst others) in our local market. Over 150 keywords on page one of google. I checked out a few things using some moz tools and didn't find anything that would suggest that this has come from white hat strategies, tactics or links etc. Interested in how he is doing this and if it is white hat? Thanks, C
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | charlesgrimm0