SEOmoz suddenly reporting duplicate content with no changes???
-
I am told the crawler has been updated and wanted to know if anyone else is seeing the same thing I am.
SEOmoz reports show many months of no duplicate content problems. As of last week though, I get a little over a thousand pages reported as dupe content errors.
Checking these pages I find there is similar content (hasn't changed) with keywords that are definitely different. Many of these pages rank well in Google, but SEOmoz is calling them out as duplicate content. Is SEOmoz attempting to closely imitate Google's perspective in this matter and therefore telling me that I need to seriously change the similar content?
Anyone else seeing something like this?
-
Hi
We see the extreme raise in the duplicate content of our site too. If the sensitivity is adapted, will these graphs come down again?
What is your opinion on how Google sees a webshop with lot's of products and filter options? Our site www.dmlights.com/massive for example can have a lot of filtering but we try to counter this in Webmaster Tools with the URL parameters.
Do you suggest to adapt this for good seo?
Wondering about your opinions. Thanks.
-
Hey Scott,
Again, we're sorry about the odd jump in duplicate content errors!
We just launched a new crawler and it is being extremely sensitive to duplicate content. As of now we are picking up duplicate pages on your domain via:
https clones of URLs
Some pages have a “/” trailing after the URL and some don’t
We are also ignoring some rel=canonical directives
This is an issue that other users are seeing with their crawls. Our engineers have made some changes to the crawler to scale back the sensitivity to these issues on the crawler and you should be seeing the changes within a week or two.
We're really sorry for the confusion.
Best of Luck,
Chiaryn
-
Two good suggestions so far, and both I had checked. Thanks KJ Rogers and Ryan Kent.
This is starting to look like it boils down to how much the new SEOmoz crawler sees content in the same way that Google does.
We did not make any site-wide changes and the URLs identified as duplicate in the report are valid URLs that actually hold similar content (keywords and so forth were changed for each version of a slightly different product through an Excel Concatenate construct to build the content). We have actually seen these pages climb in rank over the months since the content was added.
So, like I said, the sudden identification of these as duplicate by the moz crawler is suspicious to me. Not sure it sees things the way Google does.
-
Without examining your site and the pages involved it is not possible for me to share feedback.
Is it possible you made any recent site wide changes? Changes to your header, navigation, footer or sidebar could have pushed you passed a certain threshhold of duplicate content which triggered a flag.
-
I got the same thing last week. I later found out that mine, using dynamic content on the same page, had speical characters in the url which was taking crawlers to an error page. The error page was showing a list of pages with the url's capitalized. I was able to fix some of them, but it scared the heck out of me.
I had to run a crawl test from SEOMoz to filter out what was going on. Perhaps you have something similar?
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
-
Agonizing over Meta length or content seems to make no sense as Google seems to be ignoring them!
Real frustrating for me to see Google ignoring my 'Meta Descriptions' and 'mining' my site for any description it chooses. For years my meta has always been displayed and was set up with best practices according to MOZ. My site snopro.co.nz and snopro.co.nz/wanaka-ski-hire have plenty of competition in the market but we are the only ones with a huge point of difference, we are web based only, and deliver the ski rental gear. My quality meta was a way I could control the text and use for a good CTR due to offering something unique in the 'Meta' (Rental Delivery). Seems the only way I can 'control' any text is with 'Adwords' ...funny that! Any others out there finding the same? Justin. BTW my meta is - 'Snopro Ski Rental Delivery Wanaka. We deliver & custom fit ski hire in the comfort of your accommodation. Hassle Free. Multi-day save 10%. Book here'
Algorithm Updates | | judsta0 -
How important is fresh content?
Lets say the website you are working on has covered most of the important topics on your subject. How important is it that you continue to add content to it when there really may not be much that is so relevant to your users anymore? Can a site continue to rank well if nothing new is added to the site for year but continues to get good quality links?
Algorithm Updates | | DemiGR0 -
How to keep damage low on Google after the change of URL's
Hi Peeps, Hope someone can shed a light on this and show a guidance if possible. We are going to move our sites to shopify and shopify's URL's cannot be customized to match exactly like our current URLs. What steps do I need to take so google knows the URL's are changed. Domain will be the same. Thank you in advanced.
Algorithm Updates | | cemalcebi0 -
How can I use Intuit without getting duplicate content issues
All of my Intuit site show duplicate content on the index pages. How can I avoid this
Algorithm Updates | | onestrohm0 -
Do images count as duplicate content.
Hi We have a site called buypropertyanywhere. We sell properties all over the world but at times we use the same images of complexes. Would Google see this as copying from each other therefore duplicate content. Thanks in advance
Algorithm Updates | | Feily0 -
Google and Content at Top of Page Change?
We always hear about how Google made this change or that change this month to their algorithm. Sometimes it's true and other times it's just a rumor. So this week I was speaking with someone in the SEO field who said that this week a change occurred at Google and is going to become more prevalent where content placed at the "top of the fold" on merchant sites with products are going to get better placement, rather than if you have your products at top with some content beneath them at the bottom of the page. Any comments on this?
Algorithm Updates | | applesofgold0 -
Will google punish us for using formulaic keyword-rich content on different pages on our site?
We have 100 to 150 words of SEO text per page on www.storitz.com. Our challenge is that we are a storage property aggregator with hundreds of metros. We have to distinguish each city with relevant and umique text. If we use a modular approach where we mix and match pre-written (by us) content, demographic and location oriented text in an attempt to create relevant and unique text for multiple (hundreds) of pages on our site, will we be devalued by Google?
Algorithm Updates | | Storitz0 -
Google changing case of URLs in SERPs?
Noticed some strange behavior over the last week or so regarding our SERPs and I haven't been able to find anything on the web about what might be happening. Over the past two weeks, I've been seeing our URLs slowly change from upper case to lower case in the SERPs. Our URLs are usually /Blue-Fuzzy-Widgets.htm but Google has slowly been switching them to /blue-fuzzy-widgets.htm. There has been no change in our actual rankings nor has it happened to anyone else in the space. We're quite dumbfounded as to why Google would choose to serve the lower case URL. To be clear, we do not build links to these lower case URLs, only the upper. Any ideas what might be happening here?
Algorithm Updates | | Natitude0