How critical is Duplicate content warnings?
-
Hi,
So I have created my first campaign here and I have to say the tools, user interface and the on-page optimization, everything is useful and I am happy with SEOMOZ.
However, the crawl report returned thousands of errors and most of them are duplicate content warnings.
As we use Drupal as our CMS, the duplicate content is caused by Drupal's pagination problems. Let's say there is a page called "/top5list" , the crawler decided /top5list?page=1" to be duplicate of "/top5list". There is no real solution for pagination problems in Drupal (as far as I know).
I don't have any warnings in Google's webmaster tools regarding this and my sitemap I submitted to Google doesn't include those problematic deep pages. (that are detected as duplicate content by SEOMOZ crawler)
So my question is, should I be worried about the thousands of error messages in crawler diagnostics?
any ideas appreciated
-
Personally, I'd keep an eye on it. These things do have a way of expanding over time, so you may want to be proactive. At the moment, though, you probably don't have to lose sleep over it.
-
Thanks for that command Dr. Meyers. Apparently, only 5 such pages are indexed. I suppose I shouldn't worry about this then?
-
One clarification one Vahe's answer - if these continue (?page=2, ?page=3, etc.) then it's traditional pagination. You could use the GWT solution Adam mentioned, although, honestly, I find it's hit-or-miss. It is simpler than other solution. The "ideal" Google solution is very hard to implement (and I actually have issues with it). The other option is to META NOINDEX the variants, but that would take adjusting the template code dynamically.
If it's just an issue of a bunch of "page=1" duplicates, and this isn't "true" pagination, then canonical tags are probably your best bet. There may be a Drupal plug-in or fix - unfortunately, I don't have much Drupal experience.
The question is whether these pages are being indexed by Google, and how many of them there are. At large scale, these kinds of near-duplicates can dilute your index, harm rankings, and even contribute to Panda issues. At smaller scale, though, they might have no impact at all. So, it's not always clear cut, and you have to work the risk/cost calculation.
You can run a command in Google like:
site:example.com inurl:page=
...and try to get a sense of how much of this content is being indexed.
The GWT approach won't hurt, and it's fine to try. I just find that Google doesn't honor it consistently.
-
Thanks Adam and Vahe. Your suggestions are definitely helpful.
-
For pagination problem's it would be better to use this cannonical method- http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html .
Having dup content in the form paginated results will not penalise you, rather the page/link equity will be split between all these pages. This means you would need to spend more time and energy on the original page to outrank your competitors.
To see these errors in Google Webmaster Tools you should go to the HTML sections area where it will review the sites meta data. I'm sure ull find the same issues there, instead of the sitemaps.
So to improve the overall health of your website, I would suggest that you do try and verify this issue.
Hope this helps. Any issues, best to contact me directly.
Regards,
Vahe
-
OK, this is just what I've done, and it might not work for everyone.
As far as I can tell, the duplicate content warnings do not hurt my rankings, I don't think. When I first signed up for SEOMoz they really alarmed me. If they are hurting my rankings, it's not much - as we preform well in many competitive keywords for our industry, and our website traffic has been growing ~20% year over year for many years now.
The fix for auto-generated duplicate content on our site (which I inherited as my responsibility when I started at my company) would be very expensive. It's something I plan on doing eventually along with some other overhauls, but right now it's not in the budget, because it would basically involve re-architecting how the site and databases function on the back end (ugh).
So, in order to help mitigate any issues and help keep Google from indexing all the duplicate content that can be generated by our system, I use the "URL Parameters" setting in Google Webmaster Tools (under Site Configuration). I've set up a few parameters for Google to specifically NOT INDEX, to keep the duplicate content out of the search engine. I've also set some parameters to specifically reenforce content I want indexed (along with including the original content in sitemaps I've curated myself, rather than having auto-generated sitemaps potentially polluted with duplicate content).
My thinking is that while Roger the SEOMoz bot is still finding this stuff and generating warnings, Googlebot is not.
I don't work at an agency - I'm in-house and I've hard to learn everything by trial and error and often fly by the seat of my pants with this sort of thing. So my conclusion/solutions may be wrong or not work for you, but it seems to work for me.
It's a band-aid fix at best, but it seems to be better than nothing!
Hope this helps,
-Adam
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
-
Email and landing page duplicate content issue?
Hi Mozers, my question is, if there is a web based email that goes to subscribers, then if they click on a link it lands on a Wordpress page with very similar content, will Google penalize us for duplicate content? If so is the best workaround to make the email no index no follow? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CalamityJane770 -
Canonical Tags - Do they only apply to internal duplicate content?
Hi Moz, I've had a complaint from a company who we use a feed from to populate a restaurants product list.They are upset that on our products pages we have canonical tags linking back to ourselves. These are in place as we have international versions of the site. They believe because they are the original source of content we need to canonical back to them. Can I please confirm that canonical tags are purely an internal duplicate content strategy. Canonical isn't telling google that from all the content on the web that this is the original source. It's just saying that from the content on our domains, this is the original one that should be ranked. Is that correct? Furthermore, if we implemented a canonical tag linking to Best Restaurants it would de-index all of our restaurants listings and pages and pass the authority of these pages to their site. Is this correct? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | benj20341 -
Duplicate Page Content for www and non-www. Help!
Hi guys, having a bit of a tough time here... MOZ is reporting duplicate content for 21 pages on eagleplumbing.co.nz, however the reported duplicate is the www version of the page. For example: http://eagleplumbing.co.nz and http://www.eagleplumbing.co.nz are considered duplicates (see screenshot attached) Currently in search console I have just updated the non-www version to be set as the preferred version (I changed this back and forth twice today because I am confused!!!). Does anyone know what the correct course of action should be in this case? Things I have considered doing include: changing the preferred version to the www version in webmaster tools, setting up 301 redirects using a wordpress plugin called Eggplant 301 redirects. I have been doing some really awesome content creation and have created some good quality citations, so I think this is only thing that is eaffecting my rank. Any help would be greatly appreciated. view?usp=sharing
Technical SEO | | QRate0 -
How different should content be so that it is not considered duplicate?
I am making a 2nd website for the same company. The name of the company, our services, keywords and contact info will show up several times within the text of both websites. The overall text and paragraphs will be different but some info may be repeated on both sites. Should I continue this? What precautions should I take?
Technical SEO | | savva0 -
Ways of Helping Reducing Duplicate Content.
Hi I am looking to no of anyway there is at helping to reduce duplicate content on a website with out breaking link and affecting Google rankings.
Technical SEO | | Feily0 -
Is using a customer quote on multiple pages duplicate content?
Is there any risk with placing the same customer quote (3-4 sentences) on multiple pages on your site?
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe0 -
Forget Duplicate Content, What to do With Very Similar Content?
All, I operate a Wordpress blog site that focuses on one specific area of the law. Our contributors are attorneys from across the country who write about our niche topic. I've done away with syndicated posts, but we still have numerous articles addressing many of the same issues/topics. In some cases 15 posts might address the same issue. The content isn't duplicate but it is very similar, outlining the same rules of law etc. I've had an SEO I trust tell me I should 301 some of the similar posts to one authoritative post on the subject. Is this a good idea? Would I be better served implementing canonical tags pointing to the "best of breed" on each subject? Or would I be better off being grateful that I receive original content on my niche topic and not doing anything? Would really appreciate some feedback. John
Technical SEO | | JSOC0 -
How do i deal with duplicate content on the same domain?
I'm trying to find out if there's a way we can combat similar content on different pages on the same site, without having to re write the whole lot? Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | indurain0