Duplicate Page title - PHP Experts!
-
After running a crawl diagnostics i was surprised to see 336 duplicate page titles. But i am wondering if it is true or not. Most of them are not a page at all but a .php variation.
for example: The following are all the same page, but a different limit on viewing listings. Limiting your view to 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 as you choose.
.com/?lang=en&limit=5
.com/?lang=en&limit=5&limitstart=10
.com/?lang=en&limit=5&limitstart=15
.com/?lang=en&limit=5&limitstart=20
.com/?lang=en&limit=5&limitstart=25Same type of things are going on all over the site causing 228 duplicate content errors and the already mentioned 336 duplicate pages. But is "crawl diagnostic telling the truth" or is it just some php thing? I am not a php expert so any input would be much appreciated.
What should i do?
-
Both Ryan and Marie provided good answers, but let me elaborate further.
This is not a php thing. You can verify this yourself by visiting these pages.
Does the page content change when you visit /?lang=en&limit=5&limitstart=20 and switch to /?lang=en&limit=5&limitstart=20? If these look like the same page, then you have a duplicate content/title issue on your hands.
Google's take on the matter is simple...
"Provide one version of a URL to reach a document
To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this could split the reputation of that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs to the dominant URL is a good solution for this. You may also use canonical URL or use the rel="canonical" link element if you cannot redirect"
You have several options to deal with this, depending on the content_._
- Use the canonical tag to point the different versions of the page towards a single, definitive URL. Best to use this option only if the pages are actually duplicate.
- If the pages are not duplicate in content, but duplicate in title, then make sure your CMS writes unique title tags for every unique page of content, as Marie describes.
- If these extra pages are producing lists of only slightly varying entries, like a list of blog archives, you may consider adding a Meta Robots tag to NOINDEX, FOLLOW those superfluous pages.
- If dealing with pagination, here's an excellent article from Adam Audette to help.
This is a tricky area, and you must be careful when dealing with duplicate content, because it's easy to make a mistake and have Google de-index your content. That said, by correcting these errors, you just might see an improvement in your indexation and traffic stats.
-
I'm not sure if this will answer your question or just confuse things, but here's my take on the situation.
Are the pages all duplicate content, or are the titles just duplicated? If this is all the exact same page but simply with a different url then the solution is to use a rel canonical tag. (See http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394). This tells Google what the original version of the page is and to not index the other pages.
However, if these are all different pages and you are trying to create a unique title for each then there are some ways to do this. Like Ryan mentioned, if you're using a CMS (i.e. Wordpress) there's likely a plugin that will do this for you. But, if you have a static site then here is what I do. I have a static site and I have a page called, let's say, www.example.com/information?id=123. I have thousands of these pages but they all have different content. The content is generated from a database.
So, what I do is I put php in the head of the page, before the title. The php reads the database and grabs some information about the page and stores that information in a variable called $title. Then, in the title tag I do this:
<title><?php echo $title; ?></title>
Hopefully that makes sense!
-
Let me preface by saying I am not a PHP expert. I do have some familiarity with PHP and the issue you mention.
The bottom line, you do not wish to use the same title for multiple URLs. Using the URLs you shared, some possible titles would be:
Best Restaurants in Miami
Best Restaurants in Miami - Page 3
Best Restaurants in Miami - Page 4
You need to adjust your site code to add a page number to the existing URLs. Most popular software is set up to do this automatically.
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
-
Why is my inner pages ranking higher than main page?
Hi everyone, for some reason lately i have discovered that Google is ranking my inner pages higher than the main subfolder page. www.domain.com/subfolder --> Target page to be ranked
Technical SEO | | davidboh
www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus ---> page that is currently ranking Also in the SERP most of the time, it is showing both links in this manner. www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus
-----------www.domain.com/subfolder Thanks in advance.1 -
Local SEO - Page Titles
Hi Folks, Complete newbie (well last 12 months) I have recentley added a blog to my site and have been doing quite a bit of quite word researching through google. I have found some good keywords that have up till now escaped me! Heres my question because I trying for local traffic, mainly newcastle durham and sunderlanddo i go with one of the following two options get two very similar keywords in my article and go for both and rely on google to bring up local listings for the end user in my area e.g Small garden design | Garden design from the experts. (keywords bold ) or Garden Design | Newcastle | Sunderland | Durham | so I have geo locations in title either way I will obviously have both keywords and locations in the artcle Help please I dont want to write many hours and find I have missed a trick! Many thank guys n girls!
Technical SEO | | easigrassne0 -
How do I fix issue regarding near duplicate pages on website associated to city OR local pages?
I am working on one e-commerce website where we have added 300+ pages to target different local cities in USA. We have added quite different paragraphs on 100+ pages to remove internal duplicate issue and save our website from Panda penalty. You can visit following page to know more about it. And, We have added unique paragraphs on few pages. But, I have big concerns with other elements which are available on page like Banner Gallery, Front Banner, Tool and few other attributes which are commonly available on each pages exclude 4 to 5 sentence paragraph. I have compiled one XML sitemap with all local pages and submitted to Google webmaster tools since 1st June 2013. But, I can see only 1 indexed page by Google on Google webmaster tools. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/local http://www.bannerbuzz.com/local/US/Alabama/Vinyl-Banners http://www.bannerbuzz.com/local/MO/Kansas-City/Vinyl-Banners and so on... Can anyone suggest me best solution for it?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Duplicate Title Tags and Meta Desc even with the correct Canonical Tag
I show a large/growing number of duplicate title tags and duplicate meta descriptions in my webmaster tools. I look at both pages Link 1 - http://www.thatsmytopper.com/wedding-cake-toppers/theme-cake-toppers/beach-theme-cake-toppers/where/color/petal-pink.html Link 2 - http://www.thatsmytopper.com/wedding-cake-toppers/theme-cake-toppers/beach-theme-cake-toppers/where/color/petal-pink/limit/16.html Both pages have the following canonical url: <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.thatsmytopper.com/wedding-cake-toppers/theme-cake-toppers/beach-theme-cake-toppers.html" > Why does this show up as a duplicate title tag and description to Google still?
Technical SEO | | bhalverson0 -
Duplicate Content on SEO Pages
I'm trying to create a bunch of content pages, and I want to know if the shortcut I took is going to penalize me for duplicate content. Some background: we are an airport ground transportation search engine(www.mozio.com), and we constructed several airport transportation pages with the providers in a particular area listed. However, the problem is, sometimes in a certain region multiple of the same providers serve the same places. For instance, NYAS serves both JFK and LGA, and obviously SuperShuttle serves ~200 airports. So this means for every airport's page, they have the super shuttle box. All the provider info is stored in a database with tags for the airports they serve, and then we dynamically create the page. A good example follows: http://www.mozio.com/lga_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/jfk_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/ewr_airport_transportation/ All 3 of those pages have a lot in common. Now, I'm not sure, but they started out working decently, but as I added more and more pages the efficacy of them went down on the whole. Is what I've done qualify as "duplicate content", and would I be better off getting rid of some of the pages or somehow consolidating the info into a master page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | moziodavid0 -
How do I 301 redirect a number of pages to one page
I want to redirect all pages in /folder_A /folder_B to /folder_A/index.php. Can I just write one or two lines of code to .htaccess to do that?
Technical SEO | | Heydarian0 -
Duplicate Meta Descriptions From Pages That Don't Exist
Hi Guys I am hoping someone can help me out here. I have had a new site built with a unique theme and using wordpress as the CMS. Everything was going fine but after checking webmaster tools today I noticed something that I just cannot get my head around. Basically I am getting warnings of Duplicate page warnings on a couple of things. 1 of which i think i can understand but do not know how to get the warning to go. Firstly I get this warning of duplicate meta desciption url 1: / url 2: /about/who-we-are I understand this as the who-we-are page is set as the homepage through the wordpress reading settings. But is there a way to make the dup meta description warning disappear The second one I am getting is the following: /services/57/ /services/ Both urls lead to the same place although I have never created the services/57/ page the services/57/ page does not show on the xml sitemap but Google obviously see it because it is a warning in webmaster tools. If I press edit on services/57/ page it just goes to edit the /services/ page/ is there a way I can remove the /57/ page safely or a method to ensure Google at least does not see this. Probably a silly question but I cannot find a real comprehensive answer to sorting this. Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | southcoasthost0 -
Do index.php extensions count as duplicate content on Joomla sites?
When i run my error report, i see 2 duplicate pages, but both are the main domain and then the /index.php extension. how do i fix this? does it really count as duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | valetseo0