Strange duplicate content issue
-
Hi there,
SEOmoz crawler has identified a set of duplicate content that we are struggling to resolve.
For example, the crawler picked up that this page www. creative - choices.co.uk/industry-insight/article/Advice-for-a-freelance-career is a duplicate of this page www. creative - choices.co.uk/develop-your-career/article/Advice-for-a-freelance-career.
The latter page's content is the original and can be found in the CMS admin area whilst the former page is the duplicate and has no entry in the CMS. So we don't know where to begin if the "duplicate" page doesn't exist in the CMS.
The crawler states that this page www. creative-choices.co.uk/industry-insight/inside/creative-writing is the referrer page. Looking at it, only the original page's link is showing on the referrer page, so how did the crawler get to the duplicate page?
-
it could be any one out of the following 3 scenarios.
1: The page in question was moved at some point and since the CMS still accepts the old URL, when google re-visits the old URL it still finds it. So in this scenario it will find both the old URL and the new URL and index both.
2: google hasn't revisited the page for a long while but it is still in it's index, even though it would get a 301 by the CMS when it visits the page. Can be easily fixed by going to webmaster tools and ask it to remove it from the index.
3: there are still links to the old URL either on site or off site and since the CMS doesn't 301 the oid page it will index it again with a new URL.
4:the page still exists in the CMS because of some strange setting or equivalent in the CMS.
as mentioned before the easy fix is to use a robots.txt and deny access to the page and ask google to remove it from it's index. the better fix is to find the problem in the CMS and solve it. a midway fix could be to 301 it in the .htaccess or equvilent on an ISS server.
hope it helped
-
Thanks René,
I updated my earlier reply with a question that i think you missed.
The list isn't growing, which is a good thing but how is it possible for the crawler to pick up the duplicate page urls when the the referrer page has the correct urls?
-
I have come across this sort of issue a gazillion times + infinite.. almost all of our clients seem to have dub cont problems of one kind or another
but often it is different things that is the problem. But I'm afraid that I can't point you in the right direction, since I have no experience with your CMS. To be able to do that I would need to have access to the site itself. (since I don't know the CMS.) My advice would be to get a developer on the issue or to grab hold of the support for the CMS (if any.)
-
Hi René,
Thanks for your reply and suggestions. It could well be CMS remembering old urls as this list isn't growing. But is the crawler able to pickup the old urls when the referrer page has the correct urls?
We are on Expression Engine. Have you come across this sort of issue before?
-
Well it kinda have to be in the CMS, since it has 2 different paths.. But you could fix it by going to the .htaccess (if you have access and redirect it to the right URL and make a robots.txt and disallow access to the page.
if the page has been moved to a new location theres a good chance that the CMS is setup to remember the old URL and show the page. This is indeed a problem, but a potential problem with the CMS.
Go to webmaster tools and ask them to delete the dublicate from thier index.
You specific problem could originate from a ton of different problems and it is kinda har to fix without direct access to everything. What CMS is it your using?
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
-
Do you think my client is being hit for duplicate content?
Wordpress website. The client's website is http://www.denenapoints.com/ The URL that we purchase so that we could setup the hosting account is http://houston-injury-lawyers.com, which shows 1 page indexed in Google when I search for site:http://houston-injury-lawyers.com On http://www.denenapoints.com/ there is <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://houston-injury-lawyers.com/"> But on http://houston-injury-lawyers.com it says the same thing, <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://houston-injury-lawyers.com/" /> Is this how it should be setup, assuming that we want everything to point to http://denenapoints.com/? Maybe we should do a 301 redirect to be 100% Sure? Hopefully I explained this well enough. Please let me know if anyone has any thoughts, thanks!
Technical SEO | | georgetsn0 -
Duplicate Content of Reseller Product?
There is a particular product/service that I resell through an API. There are quite a few of them and each one requires a lot of content. The company provides web content for each product but I'm wondering about the SEO implications of using it? Obviously using the content, it will not be unique so I won't be able to rank (easily at least) for these products. Are there any _negative_results that I can get from using this content though? If I simply won't rank for those products it's not an issue since I get traffic elsewhere. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | reliabox0 -
"Daily Special" = Duplicate Content?
I believe this has been addresses and answered previously, but despite searching the Q&A archives, I was unable to find the question and answer. So, please be gentle and patient: We have an eCommerce site with several hundred products, most of which use the structure: www.mysite.com/subcategory/itemA.html. We wish to feature itemA as a "daily special" item, and our Magento developer has recommended: www.mysite.com/internet-daily-special/**itemA.html ** Because itemA.html is the same page—albeit following a different path—will Google see this as duplicate content? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RScime250 -
Duplicate page content
Hello, My site is being checked for errors by the PRO dashboard thing you get here and some odd duplicate content errors have appeared. Every page has a duplicate because you can see the page and the page/~username so... www.short-hairstyles.com is the same as www.short-hairstyles.com/~wwwshor I don't know if this is a problem or how the crawler found this (i'm sure I have never linked to it). But I'd like to know how to prevent it in case it is a problem if anyone knows please? Ian
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
Techniques for diagnosing duplicate content
Buonjourno from Wetherby UK 🙂 Diagnosing duplicate content is a classic SEO skill but I'm curious to know what techniques other people use. Personally i use webmaster tools as illustrated here: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/webmaster-tools-duplicate.jpg but what other techniques are effective? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
David0 -
Duplicate content on my home
Hello, I have duplication with my home page. It comes in two versions of the languages: French and English. http://www.numeridanse.tv/fr/ http://www.numeridanse.tv/en/ You should know that the home page are not directories : http://www.numeridanse.tv/ Google indexes the three versions: http://bit.ly/oqKT0H To avoid duplicating what is the best solution?
Technical SEO | | android_lyon
Have a version of the default language? Thanks a lot for your answers. Take care. A.0 -
Aspx filters causing duplicate content issues
A client has a url which is duplicated by filters on the page, for example: - http://www.example.co.uk/Home/example.aspx is duplicated by http://www.example.co.uk/Home/example.aspx?filter=3 The client is moving to a new website later this year and is using an out-of-date Kentico CMS which would need some development doing to it in order to enable implementation of rel canonical tags in the header, I don't have access to the server and they have to pay through the nose everytime they want the slightest thing altering. I am trying to resolve this duplicate content issue though and am wondering what is the best way to resolve it in the short term. The client is happy to remove the filter links from the page but that still leaves the filter urls in Google. I am concerned that a 301 redirect will cause a loop and don't understand the behaviour of this type of code enough. I hope this makes sense, any advice appreciated.
Technical SEO | | travelinnovations0 -
Duplicate title issue
During the crwal SEO moz found duplicate title problems with quite a good number of pages. This was because my site has test questions like http://www.skill-guru.com/12/scjp-5-mock-test/questions and when user does next or previous, they can traverse to different pages but the title and descrition would remain same. How can this probkem be resolved ?
Technical SEO | | skill-guru2