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.
Magento Dublicate Content (Noindex and Rel"canonical")
-
Hi All,
Just looking for some advice regarding my website on magento.
We by mistake didnt enable canonical tags and noindex tags so had a big problem with dublicate content from filter pages but also have URLs to Cats as Yes so this didnt help with not having canonical tags enabled.
We now have everything enabled for a few weeks now but dont see much drop in indexed pages in google. (currently 27k and we have only 5k products)
My question basically is how do we speed up noindexation of dublicate content and also would you change URL to cats as No so google just now sees the url to products? (my concerns with this is would leaving it to Yes help because it will hopefully read the canonical tags on products now)
Thank you in advance
Michael
-
Hi Carson
Thank you for replying and the indepth answers.
I did read somewhere that dublicate content on your own website isnt too bad but im glad you have helped me clear things up.
So would you change cat urls to no or leave them to yes for now till google can see all the canoical tags on products?
Thanks
Mike
-
I think there's an underlying assumption here that duplicate content will harm your site, and that's not necessarily true. There's no "duplicate content penalty" - it's more than a filter. Google is better than most at recognizing this, especially with common CMS like Magento and WP. Google attempts to look at the links going to both pages and understand their authority together.
Duplicate content is more of an issue if you're pulling content that others are using as well, e.g. on product descriptions provided by manufacturers and other types of content. Google won't "penalize" you, but they will sometimes filter your site out in favor of the most authoritative site with that content. It's also an issue (mostly for Panda) if you're creating keyword pages that contain duplicate of even very-similar content just to rank for a bunch of very similar keywords.
So my first bit of advice is, "don't obsess over intra-site duplicate content."
That said, it's best to reduce and avoid duplicate content 1) for less-sophisticated search engine, 2) for the sake of your own analytics data integrity and simplicity, 3) just in case Google doesn't get it (very rare).
Set the categories up however you think is best for the user (generally just the product name without categories), double-check the canonical URLs, and wait for Google to catch up on the canonical and noindex. It can take many months depending on your site's authority, but it's unlikely to move the needle either way. Keep in mind that Google may keep pages in the index even if they are honoring the canonical tag - they'll just show the canonical version but keep both indexed. That's working as intended - don't worry about that
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
-
Quick Fix to "Duplicate page without canonical tag"?
When we pull up Google Search Console, in the Index Coverage section, under the category of Excluded, there is a sub-category called ‘Duplicate page without canonical tag’. The majority of the 665 pages in that section are from a test environment. If we were to include in the robots.txt file, a wildcard to cover every URL that started with the particular root URL ("www.domain.com/host/"), could we eliminate the majority of these errors? That solution is not one of the 5 or 6 recommended solutions that the Google Search Console Help section text suggests. It seems like a simple effective solution. Are we missing something?
Technical SEO | | CREW-MARKETING1 -
Schema markup for products is missing "price": Is this bad?
Hey guys, So a current client of mine has an e-commerce shop with a few hundred products. They purposely choose to keep the prices off of their website, which is causing errors in Google Webmaster Tools. Basically the error shows: Error: Structured Data > Product (markup: schema.org) Error type: missing price 208 items with error Is this a huge deal? Or are we allowed to have non-numerical prices for schema ie. "call for quote"
Technical SEO | | tbinga1 -
"Search Box Optimization"
A client of ours recently received en email from a random SEO "company" claiming they could increase website traffic using a technique known as "search box optimization". Essentially, they are claiming they can insert a company name into the autocomplete results on Google. Clearly, this isn't a legitimate service - however, is it a well known technique? Despite our recommendation to not move forward with it, the client is still very intrigued. Here is a video of a similar service:
Technical SEO | | McFaddenGavender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW2Fz6dy1_A0 -
How do I add "noindex" or "nofollow" to a link in Wordpress
It's been a while since I've SEOed a Wordpress site. How do I add "nofollow" or "noindex" to specific links? I highlight the anchor text in the text editor, I click the "link" button. I could have sworn that there used to be an option in the dialogue box that pops up.
Technical SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Rel = prev next AND canonical?
I have product category pages that correctly have the prev next but the moz crawl is giving me duplicate content errors. I would not think I also need to have canonical - but do I ?
Technical SEO | | JohnBerger0 -
Use webmaster tools "change of address" when doing rel=canonical
We are doing a "soft migration" of a website. (Actually it is a merger of two websites). We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days. These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site. Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's. Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0 -
Geotargeting duplicate content to different regions - href and canonical tag confusion
If you duplicate content onto a sub-folder for say a new US geotargeted site (to target kw spelling differences) and, in addition to GWT geotargeting settings, implement the 'Canonical' and 'Hreflang' tags on these new pages to show G different region and language version (en-us). Then does the original/main site similar pages also need to have canonical and href tags ? The main/original sites page I don't really want to target a specific country (although existing signals (hosting etc) will be UK (primary target of main site) but pages show up in other country searches too (which we want). Im presuming fine to leave the original/main site as it currently is although wording in google blog/webmaster central articles etc are a bit confusing hence why im asking for anyone elses opinion/input on this. Also is there are any benefit (or just best practice) to use 'www.example.com/en-us/...' in the subdirectory URL as opposed to just 'www.example.com/us/' many thanks in advance to any commentators 🙂
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How is a dash or "-" handled by Google search?
I am targeting the keyword AK-47 and it the variants in search (AK47, AK-47, AK 47) . How should I handle on page SEO? Right now I have AK47 and AK-47 incorporated. So my questions is really do I need to account for the space or is Google handling a dash as a space? At a quick glance of the top 10 it seems the dash is handled as a space, but I just wanted to get a conformation from people much smarter then I at seomoz. Thanks, Jason
Technical SEO | | idiHost0