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 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!!!
-
Yeah I looked further into the URL removal, but I guess technically I did not meet the criteria....and honestly I am fearful other potential implications of removal....I guess I will just have to wait for the 301 to ick in. I just cant believe there is not a simple .htaccess code to cause all URL's to show the .html extension. I mean it is a simple thing to implement the reverse and have the extension dropped...I mean....good lord...
Thanks for all your help though Mike, I truly appreciate the efforts!
-
LAME! You may just want to let the 301 redirect you have in place take its course or remove the URL from Google's index since it was added by mistake anyway.
Mike
-
Nope. .....good lord....
-
Nope.
-
If that does not work, give this a whirl:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{3,4}
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html
-
Try:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^.]*[^./])$ /$1.html [R=301,L] -
That caused the same "500 Internal Server Error" .......
-
Try my code without all the other redirects, and see if it works. If it does, then add back the other redirects one by one until everything works.
-
Oh, and my site auditor is seeing it as a directory with a file in it??? Ugghhh....
-
Nope. Didn't work. I am seriously about to lose my mind with this....
-
Maybe give this a whirl:
If URL does not contain a period or end with a slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.|/$)
append .html to requested URL
RewriteRule (.*) /$1.html [L]
-
I get a server error when I do this? Sooo confused... Here is the htaccess changes I made. FYI...I have removed the code you told me to put in there temporarily so the site's not down. I attached the server error screenshot too...
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! .html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! /$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.htmlRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/ [R=301,L]RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganremodeling.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [R=301,L] -
You repeat this code a few times, maybe that's the problem? Pretty sure you only need it once:
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /The line:
RewriteEngine On
Also only needs to be included once in an htaccess file. You may want to remove all the other instances.
Try adding this code at the very top, after the first "RewriteEngine On":
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! .html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! /$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html -
Thanks Mike, you are awesome! I actually was thinking to do that, but I was concerned that it might have some larger implications?
I also just resubmitted a sitemap so hopefully that "might" speed up the crawl process...
Thanks again!
-
"I accidentally manually submitted the url to google and manually in submitted it to index and that when this issue began...."
It sounds like you accidently added this URL to the index. You can follow the procedure outlined below to request Google remove the specific URL from the index:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59819
I checked your site's structure using Screaming Frog and it does not appear that you are linking to any non-.html versions. If I perform a scan using one of your non-.html pages, it appears that it only links to itself.
Since you have the 301 redirect in place, you can choose to wait it out and Google should correct things eventually; otherwise, requesting Google remove the URL is a faster... PERMANENT process.
Good luck.
Mike
-
No it's not a wordpress, it was created with Dreamweaver. I didn't make sample and sample.html same page, but google is treating it that way.... I have implemented the 301, so I guess I just have to wait for a crawl
-
Thank you very for your input! When I implement into my .htacces what you suggested I get a "Internet 500 Server Error" ? Maybe it would help if I list what I currently have in my .htaccess I had to redirect some old domains and did canonical redirects and default non .index....I hope this help, I am at my wit's end... I also attached a screenshot of the webmaster warning... THANKS!!!
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/ [R=301,L]RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganremodeling.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [R=301,L]Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase / -
Is this a wordpress based site ? What CMS are you using ? How were you able to get domain.com/sample and domain.com/sample.html be the same page ? Either way, canonical tag is the correct solution in this case. There's no need for a 301 and if you do 301 redirects, you are not really fixing the issue caused by your CMS System.
I would therefore strongly advise to use the canonical tag. That's the intended use of that tag.
-
A canonical tag won't physically redirect you when you visit the page, it just lets the search engines know which is the right page to index.
If you want to actually redirect using .htaccess, try using this code
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! .html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! /$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html
-
I tried the canonical and when I enter the url without the .html, it doesn't resolve to the url with the .html extension. I tried an .htaccess reirect...I am stumped, I can't get it to redirect automatically the the .html I accidentally manually submitted the url to google and manually in submitted it to index and that when this issue began....
-
Add a canonical tag to your header so that Google/Bing knows which version of your page they should be indexing.
You can also try looking into where the link to the non-html page is coming from. If it's an internal link, just change it so that Google doesn't continue to crawl it.
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
-
How to check if the page is indexable for SEs?
Hi, I'm building the extension for Chrome, which should show me the status of the indexability of the page I'm on. So, I need to know all the methods to check if the page has the potential to be crawled and indexed by a Search Engines. I've come up with a few methods: Check the URL in robots.txt file (if it's not disallowed) Check page metas (if there are not noindex meta) Check if page is the same for unregistered users (for those pages only available for registered users of the site) Are there any more methods to check if a particular page is indexable (or not closed for indexation) by Search Engines? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boostaman0 -
My blog is indexing only the archive and category pages
Hi there MOZ community. I am new to the QandA and have a question. I have a blog Its been live for months - but I can not get the posts to rank in the serps. Oddly only the categories rank. The posts are crawled it seems - but seen as less important for a reason I don't understand. Can anyone here help with this? See here for what i mean. I have had several wp sites rank well in the serps - and the posts do much better. Than the categories or archives - super odd. Thanks to all for help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | walletapp0 -
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
How can I prevent duplicate pages being indexed because of load balancer (hosting)?
The site that I am optimising has a problem with duplicate pages being indexed as a result of the load balancer (which is required and set up by the hosting company). The load balancer passes the site through to 2 different URLs: www.domain.com www2.domain.com Some how, Google have indexed 2 of the same URLs (which I was obviously hoping they wouldn't) - the first on www and the second on www2. The hosting is a mirror image of each other (www and www2), meaning I can't upload a robots.txt to the root of www2.domain.com disallowing all. Also, I can't add a canonical script into the website header of www2.domain.com pointing the individual URLs through to www.domain.com etc. Any suggestions as to how I can resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iam-sold0 -
No-index pages with duplicate content?
Hello, I have an e-commerce website selling about 20 000 different products. For the most used of those products, I created unique high quality content. The content has been written by a professional player that describes how and why those are useful which is of huge interest to buyers. It would cost too much to write that high quality content for 20 000 different products, but we still have to sell them. Therefore, our idea was to no-index the products that only have the same copy-paste descriptions all other websites have. Do you think it's better to do that or to just let everything indexed normally since we might get search traffic from those pages? Thanks a lot for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EndeR-0 -
Artist Bios on Multiple Pages: Duplicate Content or not?
I am currently working on an eComm site for a company that sells art prints. On each print's page, there is a bio about the artist followed by a couple of paragraphs about the print. My concern is that some artists have hundreds of prints on this site, and the bio is reprinted on every page,which makes sense from a usability standpoint, but I am concerned that it will trigger a duplicate content penalty from Google. Some people are trying to convince me that Google won't penalize for this content, since the intent is not to game the SERPs. However, I'm not confident that this isn't being penalized already, or that it won't be in the near future. Because it is just a section of text that is duplicated, but the rest of the text on each page is original, I can't use the rel=canonical tag. I've thought about putting each artist bio into a graphic, but that is a huge undertaking, and not the most elegant solution. Could I put the bio on a separate page with only the artist's info and then place that data on each print page using an <iframe>and then put a noindex,nofollow in the robots.txt file?</p> <p>Is there a better solution? Is this effort even necessary?</p> <p>Thoughts?</p></iframe>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbaylor0 -
Indexed Pages in Google, How do I find Out?
Is there a way to get a list of pages that google has indexed? Is there some software that can do this? I do not have access to webmaster tools, so hoping there is another way to do this. Would be great if I could also see if the indexed page is a 404 or other Thanks for your help, sorry if its basic question 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
How important is the number of indexed pages?
I'm considering making a change to using AJAX filtered navigation on my e-commerce site. If I do this, the user experience will be significantly improved but the number of pages that Google finds on my site will go down significantly (in the 10,000's). It feels to me like our filtered navigation has grown out of control and we spend too much time worrying about the url structure of it - in some ways it's paralyzing us. I'd like to be able to focus on pages that matter (explicit Category and Sub-Category) pages and then just let ajax take care of filtering products below these levels. For customer usability this is smart. From the perspective of manageable code and long term design this also seems very smart -we can't continue to worry so much about filtered navigation. My concern is that losing so many indexed pages will have a large negative effect (however, we will reduce duplicate content and be able provide much better category and sub-category pages). We probably should have thought about this a year ago before Google indexed everything :-). Does anybody have any experience with this or insight on what to do? Thanks, -Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cre80