URL Capitalization Inconsistencies Registering Duplicate Content Crawl Errors
-
Hello,
I have a very large website that has a good amount of "Duplicate Content" issues according to MOZ. In reality though, it is not a problem with duplicate content, but rather a problem with URLs. For example: http://acme.com/product/features and http://acme.com/Product/Features both land on the same page, but MOZ is seeing them as separate pages, therefor assuming they are duplicates.
We have recently implemented a solution to automatically de-captialize all characters in the URL, so when you type acme.com/Products, the URL will automatically change to acme.com/products – but MOZ continues to flag multiple "Duplicate Content" issues. I noticed that many of the links on the website still have the uppercase letters in the URL even though when clicked, the URL changes to all lower case. Could this be causing the issue?
What is the best way to remove the "Duplicate Content" issues that are not actually duplicate content?
-
http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
"Another option for dealing with duplicate content is to utilize the rel=canonical tag. The rel=canonical tag passes the same amount of link juice (ranking power) as a 301 redirect, and often takes much less development time to implement."
-
If you check Google Analytics, GA is probably seeing it too. We had a similar problem. Canonicalization will help with duplicate content, but it won't help with rankings. Internally, you are sending link juice to multiple versions of the same page. In addition, you could have backlinks pointing at multiple duplicate pages, and splitting the link love.
Canonicalization does not transfer link juice the way a 301 Redirect does. All the canonical tag does is tell Google "Rank This Page". If you don't care about rankings the canonical is fine. If you do care, you need to 301 all of your pages to the lower case version.
If you decide to 301, first, build an HTML sitemap with all of the uppercase URLs. After you do the 301, have Google fetch the sitemap and submit it, This will help Googlebot wind all of the pages that were 301ed.
-
Hey man. If your store is a Magento store, there are settings for adding canonicalization tags to categories and products under:
System => Configuration => Catalog => Search Engine Optimization
h/t to Yoast for reminding me of the string to get there.
I am optimizing a Magento store that had a similar issue after a relaunch. Found that to be a very easy way to fix it.
Hope this helps.
-
I have a complex CMS for my main website; I just asked my developer to do it. On my Wordpress sites, I use an SEO plugin for this (Yoast).
-
Thank you so much Linda.
Do you know of a fast way to add a rel=canonical tag to all the pages, the website is quite large, and it would likely take months over months to do it manually.
-
Hi,
There is the same question here on moz: Duplicate Content and URL Capitalization
-
The best way to fix this is with a rel=canonical URL. Tag each page with the lower-case version. (I had this same problem.)
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
-
Backup Server causing duplicate content flag?
Hi, Google is indexing pages from our backup server. Is this a duplicate content issue? There are essentially two versions of our entire domain indexed by Google. How do people typically handle this? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks, Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
Penalties for duplicate content
Hello!We have a website with various city tours and activities listed on a single page (http://vaiduokliai.lt/). The list changes accordingly depending on filtering (birthday in Vilnius, bachelor party in Kaunas, etc.). The URL doesn't change. Content changes dynamically. We need to make URL visible for each category, then optimize it for different keywords (for example city tours in Vilnius for a list of tours and activities in Vilnius with appropriate URL /tours-in-Vilnius).The problem is that activities overlap very often in different categories, so there will be a lot of duplicate content on different pages. In such case, how severe penalty could be for duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpuzakov0 -
Duplicate Content: Organic vs Local SEO
Does Google treat them differently? I found something interesting just now and decided to post it up http://www.daviddischler.com/is-duplicate-content-treated-differently-when-local-seo-comes-into-play/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daviddischler0 -
Joomla Duplicate Page content fix for mailto component?
Hi, I am currently working on my site and have the following duplicate page content issues: My Uni Essays http://www.myuniessays.co.uk/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&template=it_university&link=2631849e33 My Uni Essays http://www.myuniessays.co.uk/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&template=it_university&link=2edd30f8c6 This happens 15 times Any ideas on how to fix this please? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grays01800 -
How do I geo-target continents & avoid duplicate content?
Hi everyone, We have a website which will have content tailored for a few locations: USA: www.site.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AxialDev
Europe EN: www.site.com/eu
Canada FR: www.site.com/fr-ca Link hreflang and the GWT option are designed for countries. I expect a fair amount of duplicate content; the only differences will be in product selection and prices. What are my options to tell Google that it should serve www.site.com/eu in Europe instead of www.site.com? We are not targeting a particular country on that continent. Thanks!0 -
Duplicate content - canonical vs link to original and Flash duplication
Here's the situation for the website in question: The company produces printed publications which go online as a page turning Flash version, and as a separate HTML version. To complicate matters, some of the articles from the publications get added to a separate news section of the website. We want to promote the news section of the site over the publications section. If we were to forget the Flash version completely, would you: a) add a canonical in the publication version pointing to the version in the news section? b) add a link in the footer of the publication version pointing to the version in the news section? c) both of the above? d) something else? What if we add the Flash version into the mix? As Flash still isn't as crawlable as HTML should we noindex them? Is HTML content duplicated in Flash as big an issue as HTML to HTML duplication?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
Two Brands One Site (Duplicate Content Issues)
Say your client has a national product, that's known by different brand names in different parts of the country. Unilever owns a mayonnaise sold East of the Rockies as "Hellmanns" and West of the Rockies as "Best Foods". It's marketed the same way, same slogan, graphics, etc... only the logo/brand is different. The websites are near identical with different logos, especially the interior pages. The Hellmanns version of the site has earned slightly more domain authority. Here is an example recipe page for some "WALDORF SALAD WRAPS by Bobby Flay Recipe" http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 http://www.hellmanns.us/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 Both recipie pages are identical except for one logo. Neither pages ranks very well, neither has earned any backlinks, etc... Oddly the bestfood version does rank better (even though everything is the same, same backlinks, and hellmanns.us having more authority). If you were advising the client, what would you do. You would ideally like the Hellmann version to rank well for East Coast searches, and the Best Foods version for West Coast searches. So do you: Keep both versions with duplicate content, and focus on earning location relevant links. I.E. Earn Yelp reviews from east coast users for Hellmanns and West Coast users for Best foods? Cross Domain Canonical to give more of the link juice to only one brand so that only one of the pages ranks well for non-branded keywords? (but both sites would still rank for their branded keyworkds). No Index one of the brands so that only one version gets in the index and ranks at all. The other brand wouldn't even rank for it's branded keywords. Assume it's not practical to create unique content for each brand (the obvious answer). Note: I don't work for Unilver, but I have a client in a similar position. I lean towards #2, but the social media firm on the account wants to do #1. (obviously some functionally based bias in both our opinions, but we both just want to do what will work best for client). Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crvw0 -
ECommerce syndication & duplicate content
We have an eCommerce website with original software products. We want to syndicate our content to partner and affiliate websites, but are worried about the effect of duplicate content all over the web. Note that this is a relatively high profile project, where thousands of sites will be listing hundreds of our products, with the exact same name, description, tags, etc. We read the wonderful and relevant post by Kate Morris on this topic (here: http://mz.cm/nXho02) and we realize the duplicate content is never the best option. Some concrete questions we're trying to figure out: 1. Are we risking penalties of any sort? 2. We can potentially get tens of thousands of links from this concept, all with duplicate content around them, but from PR3-6 sites, some with lots of authority. What will affect our site more - the quantity of mediocre links (good) or the duplicate content around them (bad)? 3. Should we sacrifice SEO for a good business idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | erangalp0
