Abnormal crawl issues appearing in my Moz results
-
I have been asked to look at a site for a friend and was more than surprised to see 16,9k crawl issues appear in the dashboard... of this 6,238 are duplicate page content and 5878 are duplicated page titles.
What on earth is going on? I have spoken to the web developer as it appears there is a dev site somewhere and this is his response
[Can I stress that Google determines which site was in the index first and then removes other sites it sees as having duplicate content. Our dev sites appearing in the search index would not affect your ranking due to duplicate content as Google would see your site as the first site with the content]
As I cannot make contact with him, I am scratching my head, surely a dev site should be no-indexed, it sounds as though he is saying that its ok because Google will take the main site as the first site with the content...
Very confused! Help need MOZ community.
Manythanks,
Sarah
-
Thanks again Dirk. I like your direct and knowledgeable responses. I have sent a Linkedin connection!!
Many thanks,
Sarah
-
Hi Sarah,
Googlebot will follow these links as well and discover these "useless" pages (the are off course not useless from human perspective but they don't add value for bots - and they will be considered as duplicates). Duplicates are no reason for "punishment" - so you could just let them be. Personally I would put a nofollow on these links or add a "noindex" tag to the login page. Normally you shouldn't use nofollow on internal links - but login pages are an exemption on this (check also https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2298312/matt-cutts-you-dont-have-to-nofollow-internal-links : "Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, and things like login pages can be the exception. He said it doesn’t hurt to put the nofollow link for a link pointing to a login page, or things like terms and conditions or other “useless” pages. However, it doesn’t hurt at all for those pages to be crawled by Google."
For the practical part - if you add an additional question to a question which has been marked as answered - only the ones who have already answered will see the additional question. To be on the safe side - it's better open a new question if you want other people to have a look at it.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
-
hello Dirk, thank you for that great answer, we have since been doing a bit more digging of our own and before we go back to the web developer we want to check what should be happening with the links the we are finding duplicated as we are seeing that the issues relating to Duplicate Pages are coming from links from the login page which shows information about where the user was redirected from.
For example, if the visitor is not logged on and wishes to wish-list an item, they will be redirected to the login page, with the item code and intended action in the url; which can then continue on to the desired page once logged on.
The MOZ crawler is seeing these pages as having Duplicated Content whilst they are all the same apart from a piece of information in the URL. Should we be blocking these duplications? Are they a risk to us? What should we be doing?
I have also added this as a new question - I am quite new to this community thing so wasn't sure which was the best way to ask the question.
Many thanks again,
Sarah
-
Moz is only indexing pages it's crawler is able to find. This implies that on your production site you have links to your development site.
Don't really agree with what your dev is saying - he should correct these links first; put a noindex on these pages. Alternative - put a password on the dev site so it's only accessible with a password. If a lot of users are putting links to your dev site it could become more important than your main site. Google will try to choose the most appropriate site - but you have no guarantee that it will choose the right version. In any case - that's not the type of risk you should be willing to take.
Once this is done - you can request a removal of these pages via the search console.
If all pages are removed from the index you can adapt the robots.txt to prevent access to the Google & other bots. Do this only after all pages are removed - if not Google will never find the noindex directive.
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
-
Solving URL Too Long Issues
Moz.com is reporting that many URL's are to long, these particularly affect Product URL's where the URL is typically https://www.domainname.com/collections/category-name/products/product-name, (You guessed it we're using Shopify). However, we use Canonicals that ignore all most of the URL and are just structured https://www.domainname.com/product-name, so Google should be reading the Canonical and not the long-winded version. However, Moz cannot seem to spot this... does anyone else have this problem and how to solve so that we can satisfy the Moz.com crawl engine?
Moz Pro | | Tildenet0 -
WEbsite cannot be crawled
I have received the following message from MOZ on a few of our websites now Our crawler was not able to access the robots.txt file on your site. This often occurs because of a server error from the robots.txt. Although this may have been caused by a temporary outage, we recommend making sure your robots.txt file is accessible and that your network and server are working correctly. Typically errors like this should be investigated and fixed by the site webmaster. I have spoken with our webmaster and they have advised the below: The Robots.txt file is definitely there on all pages and Google is able to crawl for these files. Moz however is having some difficulty with finding the files when there is a particular redirect in place. For example, the page currently redirects from threecounties.co.uk/ to https://www.threecounties.co.uk/ and when this happens, the Moz crawler cannot find the robots.txt on the first URL and this generates the reports you have been receiving. From what I understand, this is a flaw with the Moz software and not something that we could fix form our end. _Going forward, something we could do is remove these rewrite rules to www., but these are useful redirects and removing them would likely have SEO implications. _ Has anyone else had this issue and is there anything we can do to rectify, or should we leave as is?
Moz Pro | | threecounties0 -
Is this owned by moz?
We continue to get hundreds of spam links per month, and just found a link from here. I do not believe this is owned by moz. https://www.wapz.net/ Maybe I'm wrong? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | plahpoy0 -
Is Moz really usefull?
After 6 months using Moz for on-page optimisation, my Google ranking didn't go up once. Should I quit Moz?
Moz Pro | | TechTumble0 -
Drop in Number of Crawled pages by SEOMOZ?
I noticed that the number of Crawled Pages on my website has been 2 pages only over past week. Before that the number of crawled pages was over 1000. My site has numerous pages as it is a Travel website that pulls search results for Flights, Cars, Hotels, Cruises and Vacation packages so there is a huge Database there. Can someone help? Thanks !
Moz Pro | | sherohass0 -
Why does my crawl diagnostics show duplicate content
My crawl diagnostics show duplicate content at mysite.com and mysite.com/index.html which are essentially the same file.
Moz Pro | | MSSBConsulting0 -
Can I exclude pages from my Crawl Diagnostics?
Right now my crawl diagnostic information is being skewed because it's including the onsite search from my website. Is there a way to remove certain pages like search from the errors and warnings of the crawl diagnostic? My search pages are coming up as: Long URL Title Element Too Long Missing Meta Description Blocked by meta-robots (Which is how I want it) Rel Canonical Here is what the crawl diagnostic thinks my page URL looks like: website.com/search/gutter%25252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525 252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252 525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525 252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252 52525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252Bcleaning/ Thank you, Jonathan
Moz Pro | | JonathanGoodman0 -
Different Moz Scores Between Page and Subdomain
The Moz scores for a page-specific website:: www.website.com are different than the subdomain: www.website.com/. www.website.com: Page MozRank: 4.58
Moz Pro | | DanSpeicher
Page MozTrust: 4.9 www.website.com/ Subdomain MozRank: 5.21
Subdomain MozTrust 5.18 Does that have any significance? Should I be routing pages to the " / " version? Thanks, Daniel0