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
-
How important is the user experience for SEO in google's eyes?
So far I've gathered that backlinks are really king, however you can't get good backlinks without well written content that serves a purpose. As well you can't do a great job with that content and not keep a good user experience, since why would anyone want to backlink to content that can be helpful if you squint an eye and suffer a few scrolling cramps. So how would you rank user experience in the everlasting war of SEO for Google? With this in mind, why would using bootstrap resources pose a problem? I've seen it could add issue to pageload times, however seems minifying could easily solve that. I personally enjoy the use of Bootstrap since it's very easy on the eyes and can have real positive effects when a user looks at content on such a framework.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Getting into Google News, URL's & Sitemaps
Hello, I know that one of the 'technical requirements' to get into google news is that the URL's have unique numbers at the end, BUT, that requirement can be circumvented if you have a Google News Sitemap. I've purchased the Yoast Google News Sitemap (https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/news-seo/) BUT just found out that you cannot submit a google news Sitemap until you are accepted into google news. Thus, my question is that do you need to add the digits to the URL's temporarily until you get in and can submit a google news sitemap, OR, is it ok to apply without them and take care of the sitemap after you get in. If anyone has any other tips about getting into Google News that would be great! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stacksnew0 -
How can I get a list of every url of a site in Google's index?
I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is. Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site? Thanks... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Webmaster tool parameters
Hey forum, About my site, idealchooser.com. Few weeks ago I've defined a parameter "sort" at the Google Webmaster tool that says effect: "Sorts" and Crawl: "No URLs". The logic is simple, I don't want Google to crawl and index the same pages with a different sort parameter, only the default page without this parameter. The weird thing is that under "HTML Improvement" Google keeps finding "Duplicate Title Tag" for the exact same pages with a different sort parameter. For example: /shop/Kids-Pants/16//shop/Kids-Pants/16/?sort=Price/shop/Kids-Pants/16/?sort=PriceHi These aren't old pages and were flagged by Google as duplicates weeks after the sort parameter was defined. Any idea how to solve it? It seems like Google ignores my parameters handling requests. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corwin0 -
Starting Over with a new site - Do's and Don'ts?
After six months, we've decided to start over with a new website. Here's what I'm thinking. Please offer any constructive Do's or Don'ts if you see that I'm about to make a mistake. Our original site,(call it mysite.com ) we have come to the conclusion, is never going to make a come back on Google. It seems to us a better investment to start over, then to to simply keep hoping. Quite honestly, we're freakin' tired of trying to fix this. We don't want to screw with it any more. We are creative people, and would much rather be building a new race car rather than trying to overhaul the engine in the old one. We have the matching .net domain, mysite.net, which has been aged about 6 years with some fairly general content on a single page. There are zero links to mysite.net, and it was really only used by us for FTP traffic -- nothing in the SERPS for mysite.net. Mysite.NET will be a complete redesign. All content and images will be totally redone. Content will be new, excellent writing, unique, and targeted. Although the subject matter will be similar to mysite.COM, the content, descriptions, keywords, images -- all will be brand spankin' new. We will have a clean slate to begin the long painful link building process.We will put in the time, and bite the bullet until mysite.NET rules Google once again. We'll change the URL in all of our Adwords campaigns mysite.net. My questions are: 1. Mysite.com still gets some ok traffic from Bing. Can I leave mysite.com substantially intact, or does it need to go? 2. If I have "bad links" pointing to mysite.com/123.html what would happen if I 301 that page to mysite.NET/abc.html ? Does the "bad link juice" get passed on to the clean site? It would be a better experience for users who know our URL if they could be redirected to the new site. 3. Should we put Mysite.net on a different server in a different clean IP block? Or doesn't matter? We're willing to spend for the new server if it would help 4. What have I forgotten? Cheers, all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarrenX0 -
Adding index.php at the end of the url effect it's rankings
I have just had my site updated and we have put index.php at the end of all the urls. Not long after the sites rankings dropped. Checking the backlinks, they all go to (example) http://www.website.com and not http://www.website.com/index.php. So could this change have effected rankings even though it redirects to the new url?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | authoritysitebuilder0 -
What's the best theme for seo if you are going to use yoast anyway
I am going to edit my theme myself so I don't need something like thesis for that. But people say that the thesis framework is amazing for seo, and it's hard to edit it manually. Does using the thesis theme do anything for you if you are going to use yoast anyway? Thanks William
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | willie790 -
Need to duplicate the index for Google in a way that's correct
Usually duplicated content is a brief to fix. I find myself in a little predicament: I have a network of career oriented websites in several countries. the problem is that for each country we use a "master" site that aggregates all ads working as a portal. The smaller nisched sites have some of the same info as the "master" sites since it is relevant for that site. The "master" sites have naturally gained the index for the majority of these ads. So the main issue is how to maintain the ads on the master sites and still make the nische sites content become indexed in a way that doesn't break Google guide lines. I can of course fix this in various ways ranging from iframes(no index though) and bullet listing and small adjustments to the headers and titles on the content on the nisched sites, but it feels like I'm cheating if I'm going down that path. So the question is: Have someone else stumbled upon a similar problem? If so...? How did you fix it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gustav-Northclick0