I have search result pages that are completely different showing up as duplicate content.
-
I have numerous instances of this same issue in our Crawl Report. We have pages showing up on the report as duplicate content - they are product search result pages for completely different cruise products showing up as duplicate content. Here's an example of 2 pages that appear as duplicate :
http://www.shopforcruises.com/carnival+cruise+lines/carnival+glory/2013-09-01/2013-09-30
http://www.shopforcruises.com/royal+caribbean+international/liberty+of+the+seas
We've used Html 5 semantic markup to properly identify our Navigation
<nav>, our search widget as an
<aside>(it has a large amount of page code associated with it). We're using different meta descriptions, different title tags, even microformatting is done on these pages so our rich data shows up in google search. (rich snippet example - http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&oq=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&gs_l=hp.3...1102.1102.0.1601.1.1.0.0.0.0.142.142.0j1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.7.psy-ab.gvI6vhnx8fk&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44442042,d.eWU&fp=a03ba540ff93b9f5&biw=1680&bih=925 )
How is this distinctly different content showing as duplicate? Is SeoMoz's site crawl flawed (or just limited) and it's not understanding that my pages are not dupe?
Copyscape does not identify these pages as dupe. Should we take these crawl results more seriously than copyscape?
What action do you suggest we take?
</aside>
</nav>
-
We do handle it a bit differently - we try to flag near duplicates by looking at source code. Glancing at a few of the instances on your site, I think we're getting a bit hung up by all of the code for the menus (like the drop-down options). It's really heavy HTML, so when only a couple of search results are different, it's making the pages seem too similar.
On the one hand, I think Google does know to ignore some aspects, like menus, and the distinct META data does help. On the other hand, search results pages, especially ones with limited or similar results, are considered fairly low value by Google, and you've got a ton of them. By trying to rank all of these variations, you probably are diluting your index quite a bit.
So, I'd say that we're being overzealous here, but I'd also say that it's indicative of a problem to some extent.
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
-
Im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, because I rank 7-12 in search results
Hi All, Pls check the below url http://www.powerwale.com/inverter-battery for inverter battery keyword in google.co.in im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, and also I still rank in between 7 to 12 in search results.. How can be in Top 3 search results.. Pls suggest.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1191 -
Google Is Indexing My Internal Search Results - What should i do?
Hello, We are using a CMS/E-Commerce platform which isn't really built with SEO in mind, this has led us to the following problem.... a large number of internal (product search) search result pages, which aren't "search engine friendly" or "user friendly", are being indexed by google and are driving traffic to the site, generating our client revenue. We want to remove these pages and stop them from being indexed, replacing them with static category pages - essentially moving the traffic from the search results to static pages. We feel this is necessary as our current situation is a short-term (accidental) win and later down the line as more pages become indexed we don't want to incur a penalty . We're hesitant to do a blanket de-indexation of all ?search results pages because we would lose revenue and traffic in the short term, while trying to improve the rankings of our optimised static pages. The idea is to really move up our static pages in Google's index, and when their performance is strong enough, to de-index all of the internal search results pages. Our main focus is to improve user experience and not have customers enter the site through unexpected pages. All thoughts or recommendations are welcome. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iThinkMedia0 -
Hreflang tag could solve any duplicate content problems on the different versions??
I have run across a couple of articles recently suggesting that using the hreflang tag could solve any SEO problems associated with having duplicate content on the different versions (.co.uk, .com, .ca, etc). here is an example here: http://www.emarketeers.com/e-insight/how-to-use-hreflang-for-international-seo/ Over to you and your technical colleagues, I think ….
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanBrown0 -
Show parts of page A on page B & C?
Good afternoon,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
A quick question. I am working on a website which has a large page with different sections. Lets say: Page 1
SECTION A
SECTION B
SECTION C Now, they are adding a new area where they want to show only certain sections, so it would look like this: Page 2
SECTION A Page 3
SECTION C Page 4
SECTION D So my question is, would a rel='canonical' tag back to Page 1 be the correct way of preempting any duplicate content issues? I do not need Page 2-4 to even be indexed, it is just a matter of usability and giving the users what they are looking for without all the rest of the extra stuff. Gracias. Tesekürler. Salamat Ko. Thanks. (bonus thumbs up for anybody who knows which languages each of those are) 🙂0 -
HELP! How does one prevent regional pages as being counted as "duplicate content," "duplicate meta descriptions," et cetera...?
The organization I am working with has multiple versions of its website geared towards the different regions. US - http://www.orionhealth.com/ CA - http://www.orionhealth.com/ca/ DE - http://www.orionhealth.com/de/ UK - http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/ AU - http://www.orionhealth.com/au/ NZ - http://www.orionhealth.com/nz/ Some of these sites have very similar pages which are registering as duplicate content, meta descriptions and titles. Two examples are: http://www.orionhealth.com/terms-and-conditions http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/terms-and-conditions Now even though the content is the same, the navigation is different since each region has different product options / services, so a redirect won't work since the navigation on the main US site is different from the navigation for the UK site. A rel=canonical seems like a viable option, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it tells search engines to only index the main page, in this case, it would be the US version, but I still want the UK site to appear to search engines. So what is the proper way of treating similar pages accross different regional directories? Any insight would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Duplicate Page Content / Titles Help
Hi guys, My SEOmoz crawl diagnostics throw up thousands of Dup Page Content / Title errors which are mostly from the forum attached to my website. In-particular it's the forum user's profiles that are causing the issue, below is a sample of the URLs that are being penalised: http://www.mywebsite.com/subfolder/myforum/pop_profile.asp?mode=display&id=1308 I thought that by adding - http://www.mywebsite.com/subfolder/myforum/pop_profile.asp to my robots.txt file under 'Ignore' would cause the bots to overlook the thousands of profile pages but the latest SEOmoz crawl still picks them up. My question is, how can I get the bots to ignore these profile pages (they don't contain any useful content) and how much will this be affecting my rankings (bearing in mind I have thousands of errors for dup content and dup page titles). Thanks guys Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaz33420 -
Duplicate Content in News Section
Our clients site is in the hunting niche. According to webmaster tools there are over 32,000 indexed pages. In the new section that are 300-400 news posts where over the course of a about 5 years they manually copied relevant Press Releases from different state natural resources websites (ex. http://gfp.sd.gov/news/default.aspx). This content is relevant to the site visitors but it is not unique. We have since begun posting unique new posts but I am wondering if anything should be done with these old news posts that aren't unique? Should I use the rel="canonical tag or noindex tag for each of these pages? Or do you have another suggestion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rise10 -
Removing Duplicate Page Content
Since joining SEOMOZ four weeks ago I've been busy tweaking our site, a magento eCommerce store, and have successfully removed a significant portion of the errors. Now I need to remove/hide duplicate pages from the search engines and I'm wondering what is the best way to attack this? Can I solve this in one central location, or do I need to do something in the Google & Bing webmaster tools? Here is a list of duplicate content http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=asc&mode=grid&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=asc&mode=list&order=name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveMaguire
http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=asc&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=desc&mode=grid&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=desc&mode=list&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=desc&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?mode=grid http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?mode=list Thanks in advance, Steve0