Can I redirect when Google is showing these as 2 different pages?
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Hi Guys, Google webmaster is showing 1000 duplicate title tags because its picking up our pages like this. How can I correct this? Please explain in detail please. Thank You Tim /store/ICICLES_NO_7_CLEAR_WITH_PINK_NUBBY//store/ICICLES_NO_7_CLEAR_WITH_PINK_NUBBY
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Thanks Man that helps a lot. We will implement asap and see if it takes care of the problem. Have a great weekend.
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This post covers Apache redirects in-depth.
Read this if you don't want an entire overview:
"Part 4 - How can I add a trailing slash to requested URLs ?
Description of the problem:
Some search engines remove the trailing slash from urls that look like directories - e.g. Yahoo does it. However it could result into duplicated content problems when the same page content is accessible under different urls. Apache gives some more information in the Apache Server FAQ.
Let's have a look at an example: domain.com/google/ is indexed in Yahoo as domain.com/google - which would result in two urls with the same content.
Solution:
The solution is to create a .htaccess rewrite rule that adds the trailing slashes to these urls. Example - redirect all urls that do not have a trailing slash to urls with a trailing slash:
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !example.php RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
Explanation of the add trailing slash .htaccess rewrite rule:
The first line tells Apache that this is code for the rewrite engine of the mod_rewrite module of Apache. The 2nd line sets the current directory as page root. But the interesting part is:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
makes sure that existing files will not get a slash added. You shouldn't do the same with directories since this would exclude the rewrite behavior for existing directories. The line
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !example.php
excludes a sample url that should not be rewritten. This is just an example. If you do not have a file or url that should not be rewritten, remove this line. The condition:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
finally fires when a url does not contain a trailing slash. Now we need to redirect the urls without the trailing slash:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
does the 301 redirect to the url, with the trailing slash appended. You should replace domain.com with your url."
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Hi Daniel, I understand it needs redirected. But for some reason I dont understand what that redirect would look like for just a trailing slash. Do you have an example. Sorry redirects are not my strong point. It is a apache server running linux.
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You have a trailing slash canonical issue. There are two version of every page on your site. The slash version and the non-slash version.
Find out which version has the most links going to it. Using Open Site Explorer is one way. And then 301 redirect all of the pages from the less popular version to the more popular version.
Directions for a 301 redirect can be found in the Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet:
http://static.seomoz.org/user_files/SEO_Web_Developer_Cheat_Sheet.pdf
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