Duplicate page errors
-
I have 102 duplicate page title errors and 64 duplicate page content errors. They are almost all from the email a friend forms that are on each product of my online store. I looked and the pages are identical except for the product name. Is this a real problem and if so is there a work around or should I see if I can turn off the email a friend option? Thanks for any information you can give me.
Cingin Gifts
-
Thanks for the good advice everyone. I really appreciate it.
Keith
-
Odds are that this isn't causing you major problems yet, but if the variants are indexed by Google (you can check with the "site:" operator), I would use the META robots tag. Robots.txt is good for prevention, but it's not great at clearing pages out of the index, in my experience.
-
The change you made to the robots should be sufficient. You can also add the meta tag in there to be doubly sure, but its not needed
Though, your social buttons has the Email A Friend option built in so you are replicating the same functionality with the Email a Friend button.
No problem, happy to help.
Aran
- if your problem is solved, dont forget the Answered, and Good answer buttons
-
Hi Aran,
I added that line to my robots.txt file.
User-agent:*
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /v/vspfiles/photos/
Disallow: /EmailaFriend.aspSomeone else recommended adding the following line to the EmailAFriend.asp file. Do I need this line?
I like the suggestion for removing the email a friend and working more on the social area. I thought turning off the email part was probably the easiest fix for the duplicate pages.
Thanks for the great advice!
Keith
-
Looking at your site I see that your Email a friend script is opening a brand new page and passing through the product ID. To stop the page being indexed you can add the following line to the robots.txt
Disallow: /EmailaFriend.asp
afte the line that looks something like
User-Agent: *
Heres some light reading on the robots.txt file
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt
BE CAUTIOUS! if you dont know what your doing seek further assistance as you could do some bad things in the robots.txt.
Whilst the solution above will probably solve your duplicate page issue. I think there is room for improvement here.
Email a friend scripts needn't take the user away from the product they are viewing. You could open the email a friend script in a new window, or even better get rid of the Email a friend button altogether and make your social sharing buttons bigger and more prominent. Also, consider giving the users a Call to Action to sharing the product via the social buttons.
Hope this helps.
Aran
-
Hi Steven, I just got that report from seomoz and those errors were returned from their crawling of the site. I'm new to this SEO stuff so I'm not sure about the indexing thing. I do know a little about the robots.txt file so I'll look into blocking those pages.
Thanks,
Keith
-
Do they need to be indexed? Perhaps you should consider using blocking any spider from crawling them using robots and using a noindex meta tag.
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
-
Error Code 804: HTTPS (SSL) Error Encountered
I'm seeing the following error in Moz as below. I have not seen any errors when crawling with different tools - is this common or is it something that needs to be looked at. SO far I only have info below. Assuming I would need to open a ticket with hosting provider for this? Thanks! Error Code 804: HTTPS (SSL) Error Encountered Your page requires an SSL security certificate to load (using HTTPS), but the Moz Crawler encountered an error when trying to load the certificate. Our crawler is pretty standard, so it's likely that other browsers and crawlers may also encounter this error. If you have this error on your homepage, it prevents the Moz crawler (and some search engines) from crawling the rest of your site.
Moz Pro | | w4rdy0 -
Joomla Opencart Duplicate Link Issue
With a few recent catalog changes my client is having tons of duplicate content issues. The most peculiar is one that I cannot see visibly on the site pages. This page: http://www.CLIENTDOMAIN.com/catalog/lights.html shows to have several duplicate content issues with URLs such as: http://www.CLIENTDOMAIN.com/catalog/lights/Lamp-DRW.htmlhttp:/www.CLIENTDOMAIN.com - where the domain is basically added to the end of the first URL. Has anyone seen this? Any fixes, plugins or thoughts? Thanks,
Moz Pro | | KristinaWitmer
Kristina0 -
503 Error or 200 OK??
So, in a Moz crawl and a Screaming From crawl, I'm getting some 503 Service Unavailable responses on the some pages. So I go to the pages in question, and the Moz bar is showing a 200 OK. The SEOBook http status checker (http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/) also shows a 200 OK. What gives? The only reason I'm looking at this is because rankings plummeted a couple of weeks ago. Thanks! UPDATE So, I decided to use the mozbar to set the user agent as Googlebot and when I tried to access the pages in question I receive this message. I don't think this is an issue... anyone else have much experience here? Your access to this site has been limited Your access to this service has been temporarily limited. Please try again in a few minutes. (HTTP response code 503) Reason: Fake Google crawler automatically blocked Important note for site admins: If you are the administrator of this website note that your access has been limited because you broke one of the Wordfence firewall rules. The reason you access was limited is: "Fake Google crawler automatically blocked". If this is a false positive, meaning that your access to your own site has been limited incorrectly, then you will need to regain access to your site, go to the Wordfence "options" page, go to the section for Firewall Rules and disable the rule that caused you to be blocked. For example, if you were blocked because it was detected that you are a fake Google crawler, then disable the rule that blocks fake google crawlers. Or if you were blocked because you were accessing your site too quickly, then increase the number of accesses allowed per minute. If you're still having trouble, then simply disable the Wordfence firewall and you will still benefit from the other security features that Wordfence provides. If you are a site administrator and have been accidentally locked out, please enter your email in the box below and click "Send". If the email address you enter belongs to a known site administrator or someone set to receive Wordfence alerts, we will send you an email to help you regain access. Please read our FAQ if this does not work.
Moz Pro | | wiredseo0 -
Can someone explain the attached on page error message?
Two weeks ago, I took down our mobile site and switched to one on dudamobile. However, for some reason, I keep getting this error/improvement message on my on page report. I do not see how I can have a cannocial problem with a page that is no longer there. Can someone explain that and what I can do about it? Thanks! eQTNRD6.png
Moz Pro | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Does the Crawl Diagnosis - Duplicate Page Content account for a canonical meta tags?
I see the same page listed 3 time (with different query params). But on each I have a meta tag pointing to the correct canonical url. By still seeing all three listed, does that mean there is an error with my meta tag?
Moz Pro | | Simantel0 -
Can't find duplicate page content
Hi all. I'm trying to create a report to list all of my site's duplicate content that SEOmoz says we have. However when I click on the link it just shows me the title and description of the page. I don't know what the other page is that has duplicate content or what the duplicate content is. Where do I find this information? Thanks in advance!
Moz Pro | | Info12340 -
What does this error mean when starting a new campaign
hi just about to start a new campaign to i can monitor my website and i get this message up but not sure what this means. Roger has detected a problem: We have detected that the domain www.headlineplus.com and the domain headlineplus.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. can anyone please let me know why this message comes up please
Moz Pro | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Broken Links and Duplicate Content Errors?
Hello everybody, I’m new to SEOmoz and I have a few quick questions regarding my error reports: In the past, I have used IIS as a tool to uncover broken links and it has revealed a large amount of varying types of "broken links" on our sites. For example, some of them were links on my site that went to external sites that were no longer available, others were missing images in my CSS and JS files. According to my campaign in SEOmoz, however, my site has zero broken links (4XX). Can anyone tell me why the IIS errors don’t show up in my SEOmoz report, and which of these two reports I should really be concerned about (for SEO purposes)? 2. Also in the "errors" section, I have many duplicate page titles and duplicate page content errors. Many of these "duplicate" content reports are actually showing the same page more than once. For example, the report says that "http://www.cylc.org/" has the same content as "http://www.cylc.org/index.cfm" and that, of course, is because they are the same page. What is the best practice for handling these duplicate errors--can anyone recommend an easy fix for this?
Moz Pro | | EnvisionEMI0