URL Parameters causing duplicate content - Login/Registration page
-
All,
I just recently acquired a new client and right away I noticed an abundance of duplicate content being recorded after the moz crawl diagnostics was completed.
After a quick digest of the issue, it seems that the majority (90%) of the outlined duplicated content is stemming from the client's Login/Registration page. Upon clicking (without being logged-in) any asset or forum discussion board link within the site, the user is automatically redirected to the Login/Registration page, which seems to create this massive redirect loop associated with dynamic url parameters.
Ex. After clicking on a select internal link (asset or discussion board) the user is redirected to the Login/Register page which presents the page and a URL that looks a lot this this:
Ex. 1 https://www.clientsite.com/register-login?ReturnUr...xxxx%xxxx%xxxx%......
Ex. 2 https://www.clientsite.com**/register-login?returnurl=/register-login?returnurl=/register-login?returnurl=/page-titl**e/
These URLs seem to becoming larger and larger...
The client wants to ensure users have to Login/Register within their site before they're allowed to view the content. This process doesn't allow for any type of preview page to be viewed by a user prior to clicking on the internal link, which in turn doesn't allow any preview pages to be indexed.
Right now, Moz is picking up all of the redirect and labeling them as duplicate page content/duplicate page titles based on the Login/Registration page.
Questions/Comments:
- Would it be wise to create preview pages for the asset pages and discussion board pages to allow for proper indexing?
- Could this be a CMS issue? Current being used on this is, Kentico.
-
There are thousands of pages being recorded in the crawl as duplicate, however only 14 seem to be indexing with duplicate title tags.
-
301 or canonical redirect strategy?
-
Moz crawl data issue?
Again, this is my first look at this issue, so more information is bound to come out soon!
Please let me know if anyone has run into this issue and if you have a possible solution to get rid of this redirect loop process.
Thanks!
-T
-
I missed one question you asked - as Google is unable to index content which is only available for registered users I might be a good idea to create a preview page - showing part of the content even when not logged-in. This only makes sense however if the content remains interesting enough for visitors even if only part of it is accessible. You risk to get a high bounce rate on these pages, as the content really needs to be very unique and valuable for the users in order to go through the complicated process of registration. Personally, I always get frustrated when landing on these kind of pages, and unless it's a site that also seems useful for future visits, I always go back to the search results and try to find other sites which provide the info without registration.
-
Hi,
The best way to find the source of the redirect loops is to perform a crawl with Screaming Frog - the moment you see these endless url's appearing - you stop the crawl - click on the url - right mouse button "Crawl Path Report" => this will lead you all the way back to the url where the error starts.
In your case, it could be sufficient to check the source of registration page and look for relative links containing /register-login - probably it's one small link hidden somewhere which is causing the problem. The crawl would be good to check if other loops exist.
The best way to avoid redirect loops is to use absolute rather than relative url's in your code - which makes it (almost) impossible to get these loops. Normally this should be something you can configure in your CMS.
If it's a login page - I would not put a canonical - it has no value for search engines (and for users who would land on this page), so I would put a noindex on these pages and nofollow on the links that point to this page.
rgds
Dirk
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
-
Youtube traffic page url referral
Hello, How can I see which videos from Youtube that has my domain inserted in their description url drive traffic to my domain? I can see in GA how many visitors are coming from Youtube to my domain, but I can't see what Youtube video pages has driven traffic. Any help?
Moz Pro | | xeonet320 -
Canonical URLs all show trailing slash on main site pages - using Yoast SEO for Wordpress - how to correct
We are using Yoast for a number of our sites. We use naked domain as the canonical. I have noticed in the header tags that all our sites show the canonical URLs as having a trailing slash: Example: http;//foxspizzajc.com, when I look at the source code, it shows the canonical as http;//foxspizzajc.com/ Of course, it is much more likely that all sites that link to us will not use the trailing slash - so preferably we do not want that to be the canonical - among other reasons. Does this need to be fixed so the trailing slash is removed? I cannot see how to do this in Yoast SEO or in Permalinks structure for Wordpress. Sorry for my ignorance. Thanks for any help.
Moz Pro | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing1 -
How long for authority to transfer form an old page to a new page via a 301 redirect? (& Moz PA score update?)
Hi How long aproximately does G take to pass authority via a 301 from an old page to its new replacement page ? Does Moz Page Authority reflect this in its score once G has passed it ? All Best
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence
Dan3 -
Error in Moz duplicate content reports
Hi - I've run the Moz campaign on a client's site. Moz is saying that there are duplicate content errors, and when I look at the errors it is showing that they are all to do with the non-www URLs having being duplicated in the www form of the URLs. However this is not the case - all the non-www URLs are all 301 redirected to the www URLs. Is this an error in the Moz tool? Has anybody experienced something similar?
Moz Pro | | rorynatkiel0 -
How to resolve Duplicate Content crawl errors for Magento Login Page
I am using the Magento shopping cart, and 99% of my duplicate content errors come from the login page. The URL looks like: http://www.site.com/customer/account/login/referer/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5tbW1zcGVjaW9zYS5jb20vcmV2aWV3L3Byb2R1Y3QvbGlzdC9pZC8xOTYvY2F0ZWdvcnkvNC8jcmV2aWV3LWZvcm0%2C/ Or, the same url but with the long string different from the one above. This link is available at the top of every page in my site, but I have made sure to add "rel=nofollow" as an attribute to the link in every case (it is done easily by modifying the header links template). Is there something else I should be doing? Do I need to try to add canonical to the login page? If so, does anyone know how to do it using XML?
Moz Pro | | kdl01 -
Seomoz crawling filtered pages
Hi, I just checked an seo campaign we started last week, so I opened seomoz to see the crawl diagnostics. Lot's of duplicate content & duplicate titles showing up, but that's because Rogerbot is crawling all of the filtered pages as well. How do I exclude these pages from being crawled? /product/brand-x/3969?order=brand&sortorder=ASC
Moz Pro | | nvs.nim
/product/brand-x/3969?order=popular&sortorder=ASC
/product/brand-x/3969?order=popular&sortorder=DESC&page=10
/product/brand-x/3969?order=popular&sortorder=DESC&page=110 -
Twitter Page Authority Score?
I've been doing some competitive research in Open Site Explorer and many of our competitors have Twitter accounts very similar to ours. Their Twitter pages are usually one of the pages with linking to their website with the most Page Authority. The incoming links from Twitter are a "no follow" as you would guess. This has been the case for a large number of well ranking sites I have looked at. www.dremed.com also has a Twitter account at: https://twitter.com/#!/DREmed . However, Open Site Explorer does not list the Twitter link as an incoming link at all ( or if it does it has no Page Authority ). The Twitter account page seems very similar in nature to other competing Twitter pages. I'm not sure why it does not ALSO pull a high Page Authority score??? Do you know why this might be? Best, Justin
Moz Pro | | justinjeffries0 -
Only Crawling 1 page?
Hi Guys, Any advice much appreciated on this! Recently set up a new campaign on my dashboard with just 5 keywords. The domain is brammer.co.uk and a quick Google site:brammer.co.uk shows a good amount of indexed pages. However - first seomoz tool crawl has only crawled 1 url!! "Last Crawl Completed: Apr. 12th, 2011 Next Crawl Starts: Apr. 17th, 2011" Any ideas what's stopping the tool crawl anymore of the site?? Cheers in advance.. J
Moz Pro | | lovealbatross0