Can you 404 any forms of URL?
-
Hi seomozzers,
<colgroup><col width="548"></colgroup>
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F256%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F258%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F242%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F257%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F260%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F225%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F251%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F176%23comment-form |These are duplicate content and the canonical version is: http://www.ex.com/user (login and pass page of the website)
Since there were multiple other duplicates which mostly have been resolved by 301s, I figured that all "LOGIN" URLs (above) should be 404d since they don't carry any authority and 301 those wouldn't be the best solution since "too many 301s" can slow down the website speed.
But a member of the dev team said:
"Looks like all the urls requested to '404 redirect' are actually the same page http://ex.com/user/login. The only part of the url that changes is the variables after the "?" . I don't think you can (or highly not recommended) make 404 pages display for variables in a url. "
So my question is: I am not sure what he means by that? and Is it really better to not 404 these?
Thanks
-
I believe this file is the base template for all the others. So if you put it on the main one, it should be on the others. That is why I suggested to add it and then view the code of the others to verify it is there as well.
-
Hi Dr.Peter,
Thanks for this great suggestion but could you tell me if the canonical would be a solution and if yes, could you tell me if my answer to Brent is right?
Thanks
-
Thanks Brent,
Interesting, I thought you would put the canonical version of the URL on all duplicates. Have you done it before?
-
I believe all you have to do is put this tag
On the main login page (should be the same url) and it will cover all variations.
If you aren't sure, go ahead and add it then view the source code of the pages above to see if they all have the same rel=canonical tag.
-
Hey Brent,
For Rel=canonical
I should insert this tag:
rel="canonical" href="http://www.ex.com/user/login" />
in each of these pages
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F256%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F258%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F242%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F257%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F260%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F225%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F251%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F176%23comment-form |Is that correct?
Thanks
-
I would either go with parameter blocking or META NOINDEX this page (that's probably a bit more effective). It would be better to block it from Google than to 404 100s of variants, as you could see a spike in 404s and that can cause some problems.
Sorry, edited this - you don't want to 404 the login pages, because that's going to return a 404 for visitors as well, and the pages won't function properly. You want to just keep this away from the bots.
-
Are they actual not found pages? If not then I wouldn't 404 them, and I have never tried to 404 parameters.
Also, I would make sure you setup a rel=canonical tag. This will also help with the duplicates.
-
Drupal and Logintoboggan is maybe not configured correctly. It seems that cleanurls is not setup as well.
Maybe that will solve your issues?
-
Thanks Brent:)
But can you tell me why this wouldn't be good to 404? what is the reason behind that statement?
Thanks
-
Instead of trying to 404 those, I would suggest utilizing GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) and use their "URL Parameters". This will allow you to tell Google not to index all of them.
Log into GWT, under "Site configuration" select "URL paremters".
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
-
Category URL Pagination where URLs don't change between pages
Hello, I am working on an e-commerce site where there are categories with multiple pages. In order to avoid pagination issues I was thinking of using rel=next and rel=prev and cannonical tags. I noticed a site where the URL doesn't change between pages, so whether you're on page 1,2, or 3 of the same category, the URL doesn't change. Would this be a cleaner way of dealing with pagination?
Technical SEO | | whiteonlySEO0 -
Special characters in URL
Will registered trademark symbol within a URL be bad? I know some special characters are unsafe (#, >, etc.) but can not find anything that mentions registered trademark. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | bonnierSEO0 -
Changing URL - Ranking Disappeared?
Hi All, I named a page URL /plectrums/ within the back end framework. But then decided to change it to /personalised-plectrums/ I resubmitted a GWT sitemap and 301 redirected plectrums -> personalised-plectrums My ranking for personalised plectrums has disappeared and has not come back does anyone know why this is? Or is there something I have missed? Lewis
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Removing a URL from Search Results
I recently renamed a small photography company, and so I transferred the content to the new website, put a 301-redirect on the old website URL, and turned off hosting for that website. But when I search for certain terms that the old URL used to rank highly for (branded terms) the old URL still shows up. The old URL is "www.willmarlowphotography.com" and when you type in "Will Marlow" it often appears in 8th and 9th place on a SERP. So, I have two questions: First, since the URL no longer has a hosting account associated with it, shouldn't it just disappear from SERPs? Second, is there anything else I should have done to make the transition smoother to the new URL? Thanks for any insights you can share.
Technical SEO | | williammarlow0 -
Duplicate pages, overly dynamic URL’s and long URL’s in Magento
Hi there, I’ve just completed the first crawl of my Magento site and SEOMOZ has picked up 1,000’s of duplicate pages, overly dynamic URL’s and long URL’s due to the sort function which appends URL’s with variables when sorting products (e.g. www.example.com?dir=asc&order=duration). I’m not particularly concerned that this will affect our rankings as Google has stated that they are familiar with the structure of popular CMS’s and Magento is pretty popular. However it completely dominates my crawl diagnostics so I can’t see if there are any real underlying issues. Does anyone know a way of preventing this? Cheers,
Technical SEO | | WendyWuTours
Al.1 -
URL structure
Hi, I am in the process of having a site created which will focus on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PS3 Vita. I would appreciate some advice when it comes to the URL structure. Each category mentioned above will have the following subsections News
Technical SEO | | WalesDragon
Reviews
Screenshots
Trailers Would the best url structure be? www.domain.com/xbox-360/news/news-story-headline
www.domain.com/ps3/reviews/ps3-game-name Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.0 -
Cyrillic letter in URL - Encoding
Hi all We are launching our site in Russia. As far as I can see by searching Google all sites have URLs in latin letters. Is there a special reason for this? - It seems that cyrillic letters also work. My technical staff says that it might give some encoding problems. Can anyone give me some insight into this? Thanks in advance.. / Kenneth
Technical SEO | | Kennethskonto0 -
Can I noindex most of my site?
A large number of the pages on my site are pages that contain things like photos and maps that are useful to my visitors, but would make poor landing pages and have very little written content. My site is huge. Would it be benificial to noindex all of these?
Technical SEO | | mascotmike0