If it's not in Webmaster Tools, is it Duplicate Title
-
I am showing a lot of errors in my SEOmoz reports for duplicate content and duplicate titles, many of which appear to be related to capitalization vs non-capitalization in the URL.
Case in point, if a URL contains a lower character, such as:
http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/distinct-microstructure-i
as opposed to the same URL having an upper character in the structure:
http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/distinct-microstructure-I
I am finding that some of the internal links on the site use the former structure and other links use the latter structure. These show as duplicate title/content in the SEOmoz reports, but they don't appear as duplicate titles in Webmaster Tools.
My question is, should I try to work with our developers to create a script to change all of the content with cap letters in the destination links internally on the site, or is this a non-issue since it doesn't appear in Webmaster Tools?
-
Hello Darin,
Typically search engines do a very good job of figuring out this particular issue. However, you may have a problem because the rel canonical tags are "self referencing". This means that the lower case version says "I'm the canonical!" and the upper case version says "No, I'm the canonical!"
If your developers can force the rel canonical tags to be all lower case URLs (assuming that's what you want to go with as the canonical version) it should take care of any potential issues here. If they want to go ahead and update all internal links to make them lower-case as well it wouldn't hurt. Keep in mind their time and if they could be using it for more important matters that would have a better ROI.
Summary: Fix the rel canonical tag issue by choosing one case or the other for that tag. Consider fixing internal links, as you suggested, if it isn't too time intensive verse other current projects, or at least add it to their plates as something to do in the future when they have time.
-
Well, if you type:
inurl:http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/ Distinct Microstructure I
In Google you won't see any duplicate or filtered results for the capitalized vs non capitalized version. However, it is best practice to have one single URL per page for link equity reasons. I'm not entirely sure what the 'correct' answer here is, but I'd go for one single URL if the fix isn't too resource intensive. A rel=canonical might be the best option here since some of the URLs might have gathered backlinks over time.
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
-
Why isn't there a browser tab title AND meta title?
Personal opinion; as a user, it makes sense for me to want a full 50+ character meta title which displays in a search engine that helps me determine if I want to click that link AND a concise browser tab title that tells me which page and brand I have open. As a search engine, I would (possibly wrongly) suppose that having one more piece user-facing of information would be helpful in understanding a page and that page's relation to the rest of the website. Theoretical example Meta title: A great title for the website I've been dreaming of! | OurBrand Browser tab title: Home | OurBrand
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sb10300 -
Avoiding duplicate content in manufacturer's [of single product] website
Hello, So I have read a lot of articles about duplicate content/ keyword canibalism/ competing with yourself, and so on. But none of these articles really fit to manufacturer website who produces one product. For example, lets say I make ceramic tiles, this means: Homepage: "Our tiles are the best tiles, we have numerous designs of tiles. We make them only from natural ceramic" Product list: "Here is a list of our tiles: Poesia tile, white tile, textured tile, etc" Page for each tile: Gallery: a bunch of images trying to prove that these tiles look best 🙂 Where to buy page: a map From what I understand this page is already doomed - it will not go well against larger retailers who don't focus only on tiles but they sell everything. This page is set to have a lot of duplicate content. But I hope I am wrong, can someone please make some suggestions how to do SEO on such a website where all pages are about the same thing? Any help would be much appreciated! Juris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JurisBBB0 -
Has Anyone Encountered This Old Meta Tag and Know It's Past Function?
name="url" content="http://www.mysite.com/"> I've never personally seen it used until I saw a site using it this past weekend...I cannot find any old documentation on the purpose if this tag either.Any insights or direction would truly appreciated!Many thanks, T 😎
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | talexanderyano0 -
I'm noticing that URL that were once indexed by Google are suddenly getting dropped without any error messages in Webmasters Tools, has anyone seen issues like this before?
I'm noticing that URLs that were once indexed by Google are suddenly getting dropped without any error messages in Webmasters Tools, has anyone seen issues like this before? Here's an example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nystromandy
http://www.thefader.com/2017/01/11/the-carter-documentary-lil-wayne-black-lives-matter0 -
Large Number of Links appearing in Google Webmaster Tools
Hello, In the last week we have noticed an extremely large number of backlink links appearing in Google Webmaster Tools. One of the sites which links to us now have over 101,000 backlinks pointing to us, when in reality it should only have 300-600. We have check the websites have not been hacked, with hidden links etc, but we can not find any. Has anyone else experienced problems with Google webmaster tools lately, displaying way too many links? Or could this be a negative SEO attack, which is yet to emerge. Thanks Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomfifteen0 -
Duplicate Title - Magento Products / Kunena Forum - Nofollow vs. Follow
Hello Mozzers! This is my first post so hopefully I can explain this in a way that is clear! I just signed up for my PRO membership and wanted to finally start hacking away at this companies site that I work for. I ran my report and noticed my Crawl Diagnostics: 715 Dupliate Page Titles I noticed that a lot those were coming from the customer login in magento. So I added the: User-agent: *Disallow:/customer/ as mentioned in this link: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10742052/duplicate-content-issues-for-login-page Any suggestions on that? Also, We have a Kunena forum on our site and have noticed all of the nofollow links. People say I should change them to follow links, but other people say leave them or I will get penalized. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NRMWEBWORKS0 -
Who is a good provider of many class C hosting IP's ?
this is to host about 80 different websites all in the same niche, all doing very well in ranking for their specific keywords, currently at hostgator seohosting plan, but hostgator has issues I do not want to continue dealing with
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | beehappy0 -
I'm not sure why SEOMoz is reporting duplicate content
I have thousands of duplicate page content errors on my site, but I'm not exactly sure why. For example, the crawl is reporting this page - http://www.fantasytoyland.com/2011-glee-costumes.html is a duplicate of this page - http://www.fantasytoyland.com/2011-jersey-shore-costumes.html . All of these products are unique to the page - what is causing it to flag as duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FutureMemoriesInc0