Multiple URLs and Dup Content
-
Hi there,
I know many people might ask this kind of question, but nevertheless ....
In our CMS, one single URL (http://www.careers4women.de/news/artikel/206/) has been produced nearly 9000 times with strings like this: http://www.careers4women.de/news/artikel/206/$12203/$12204/$12204/ and this http://www.careers4women.de/news/artikel/206/$12203/$12204/$12205/ and so on and so on...
Today, I wrote our IT-department to either a) delete the pages with the "strange" URLs or b) redirect them per 301 onto the "original" page.
Do you think this was the best solution? What about implementing the rel=canonical on these pages?
Right now, there is only the "original" page in the Google index, but who knows? And I don't want users on our site to see these URLs, so I thought deleting them (they exist only a few days!) would be the best answer...
Do you agree or have other ideas if something like this happens next time?
Thanx in advance...
-
One additional comment, and it's tricky. You need to find the crawl path creating these, BUT you don't necessarily want to block it yet. Add the canonical, and let Google keep crawling these pages. Otherwise, the canonical can't do its job properly. Then, once they've cleared out, fix the crawl path.
Are you seeing this in our (SEOmoz) tools or in Google? I'm not actually seeing these variants indexed, so it could potentially be a glitch. It looks a bit like some kind of session variable.
-
Thanks Nakul and Harald for helping.
So, we will implement the rel=canonical on these pages...
Thanx again!!!
-
Hi Stefan,
Since you have multiple URLs containing same data you have to redirect the extra links to the original URL and to do that you can either use the 301 redirect code or the rel="canonical" in the repeated pages.Deleting might not be the best solution because it would take up a lot of time. Instead go for redirection of those pages and I think that since there are too many pages to redirect the rel="canonical" would be the right option.And you must do this fast since the original page has already been indexed by the search engine.
-
I would strongly suggest doing the rel=canonical tag on all pages to the original/correct URLs. So in your CMS, the canonical tag is added, all those variations of the pages will point to the same URL just in case Google Bots find those pages.
You are on the right track about doing a canonical.
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
-
URL structure for same product in multiple categories?
Hello everyone ! I am building an ecom store using wordpress. I have assigned multiple categories to the same product. What should be the URL structure when users are navigating with different product categories? Categories Assigned: tshirt, blue, striped
Technical SEO | | Dingos
Product Name: blue-striped-tshirt Option 01: Matching site navigation breadcrumb to product url URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt
Breadcrumb - home/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/blue/blue-striped-tshirt (canonical to 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/color/blue/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/striped/blue-striped-tshirt (canonical to 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/type/striped/blue-striped-tshirt Option 02: Same product urls and different breadcrumbs based on user site navigation URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt
Breadcrumb - home/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt (url same as 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/color/blue/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt (url same as 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/type/striped/blue-striped-tshirt I have decided to got with Option 01 so that the product in each category can be ranked according to each category keyword. Which option is the best according to your experience or is there any other best practice?0 -
Submitted URL has crawl issue - Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404 - but all looks fine
Google Search Console is showing some pages up as "Submitted URL has crawl issue" but they look fine to me. I have set them as fixed but after a month they were finally re-crawled and google states the issue persists. Examples are: https://www.rscpp.co.uk/counselling/175809/psychology-alcester-lanes-end.html
Technical SEO | | TommyNewmanCEO
https://www.rscpp.co.uk/browse/location-index/889/index-of-therapy-in-hanger-lane.html
https://www.rscpp.co.uk/counselling/274646/psychology-waltham-forest-sexual-problems.html There's also some "Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404": https://www.rscpp.co.uk/counselling/112585/counselling-moseley-depression.html I also have more which are "pending", but again I couldn't see a problem with them in the first place. I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. Any advice? Thanks in advance.0 -
Moving content
I have www.SiteA.com which contains a number of sections of content, a section of which (i.e. www.SiteA.com/sectionA), we would like to move to a new domain www.SiteB.com Definitely we will ensure that a redirect strategy is in place and that we submit a sitemap for SiteB Three Questions 1. Anything else I am missing from the migration plan? 2. Since we are only moving part of SiteA to SiteB, is there another way of telling Google that we changed address for that section or are the 301s enough? 3. Currently, Section A (under SiteA) contains a subsection where we were posting an article a day. In the new site (SiteB), we decided to drop this subsection and write content (but not "exactly" the same content) under a new section. During migration, how should we handle the subsection that we have decided to stop writing? Should we: A. Import the content into SiteB and call it archives and then redirect all the urls from subsection under SiteA to the archives under SiteB? OR B. Do not move the content but redirect all the pages (365 in total) to where we think the user would be more interested in going to on SiteB? Note: A colleague of mine is worried that since the subsection has good content he thinks its necessary to actually move the content to SiteB. But again, looking at the views for the archives it caters for 1% of the the total views of this section. In other words, people only view the article on the day it is written. I hope I was clear 🙂 Your help is appreciated Thank you
Technical SEO | | seo12120 -
.htaccess: Multiple URLs catches filename
Hi, I have the following line in my .htaccess:
Technical SEO | | rasmusbang
RewriteRule privacy stdpage.php?slug=privacy [L] So if you go to the www.mysite.com/privacy it takes the stdpage.php with the argument above. But if you go to www.mysite.com/privacysssssssss catches the same file. How can I prevent this? It will give me multiple URLs with the exact same content. I have a 404 page which i would like to show instead when the match is not 100%. -Rasmus0 -
Similar Content vs Duplicate Content
We have articles written for how to setup pop3 and imap. The topics are technically different but the settings within those are very similar and thus the inital content was similar. SEOMoz reports these pages as duplicate content. It's not optimal for our users to have them merged into one page. What is the best way to handle similar content, while not getting tagged for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | Izoox0 -
Multiple redirects a problem?
When product is sold out I will 301 redirect to a category page if a similar product is not available, but now our web developer has changed all the url's of the category pages so I need to redirect them all to the new category pages but that means there are some products that are first being redirected to the no longer existent category and then being redirected again to the new category page. This seems like it might me be a problem having two 301 redirects so I wanted to find out for sure if it is. Unfortunately our system for redirecting pages is archaic so it will be difficult and time consuming to go back and redo all the redirects that are going to pages that no longer exist so I wanted to get some additional opinions before I do that.
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
A site I am working with has multiple duplicate content issues.
A reasonably large ecommerce site I am working with has multiple duplicate content issues. On 4 or 5 keyword domains related to site content the owners simply duplicated the home page with category links pushing visitors to the category pages of the main site. There was no canonical URL instruction, so have set preferred url via webmaster tools but now need to code this into the website itself. For a reasonably large ecommerce site, how would you approach that particular nest of troubles. That's even before we get to grips with the on page duplication and wrong keywords!
Technical SEO | | SkiBum0 -
How do I fix these duplicate URLs?
HI guys, I ran a report on my site and it shows some duplicate titles (example below). Do I need to add something to the htaccess file or another file to fix this? I understand that the search engines should only see 1 URL for the page. 2 pages have "Bikes for sale | used bikes | second hand bicycles" title pauslwebsite.com/bikes/ paulswebsite.com/bikes/index.asp Thanks
Technical SEO | | paulmund0