Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Duplicate content problem from an index.php file
-
Hi
One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings.
The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26
How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be
http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc
Many Thanks
-
-
Yes just use the canonical tag on the index.php file to reference the page as the domain, that'll be the easiest way.
Using an actual redirect could cause you to spiral into a loop
-
Thanks Malcolm
Can it be done using the canonical URL tag or another means rather than the .htaccess file?
I have access to the .htaccess but I am unsure of what I would need to add in there to solve my problem?
-
Its simple…
Redirect 301 http://www.mydomain.com/index.php to http://www.mydomain.com and all your link juice value and traffic will move to the index page you want and duplicate content issues will be resolved!
Hope this helps!
-
You need to add a redirect preferably in the .htaccess file so that index.php automatically redirects to the root. This should fix the problem as Google will currently see www.yourdomain.com/index.php and www.yourdomain.com/ and www.yourdomain.com asa 3 separate pages thus why your page authority is different. Google will also think they are duplicate content which is obviously bad!
This fix will work if mod_rewrite is enabled, but is usually enabled on most apache servers. http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/redirect-index-blog-root.html
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
-
Removing CSS & JS Files from Index
Hi, Google has indexed a few .CSS and .JS files that belong to our WordPress plugins and themes. I had them blocked via robots, but realized this doesn't prevent indexation (and can likely hurt us since Google wants to access these files). I've since removed the robots instructions, submitted a removal request via Search Console, but want to make sure they don't come back. Is there a way to put a noindex tag within .CSS and .JS files? Or should I do something with .htaccess instead?
Technical SEO | | kirmeliux1 -
Query Strings causing Duplicate Content
I am working with a client that has multiple locations across the nation, and they recently merged all of the location sites into one site. To allow the lead capture forms to pre-populate the locations, they are using the query string /?location=cityname on every page. EXAMPLE - www.example.com/product www.example.com/product/?location=nashville www.example.com/product/?location=chicago There are thirty locations across the nation, so, every page x 30 is being flagged as duplicate content... at least in the crawl through MOZ. Does using that query string actually cause a duplicate content problem?
Technical SEO | | Rooted1 -
Duplicate Content Issue WWW and Non WWW
One of my sites got hit with duplicate content a while ago because Google seemed to be considering hhtp, https, www, and non ww versions of the site all different sites. We thought we fixed it, but for some reason https://www and just https:// are giving us duplicate content again. I can't seem to figure out why it keeps doing this. The url is https://bandsonabudget.com if any of you want to see if you can figure out why I am still having this issue.
Technical SEO | | Michael4g1 -
Is duplicate content ok if its on LinkedIn?
Hey everyone, I am doing a duplicate content check using copyscape, and realized we have used a ton of the same content on LinkedIn as our website. Should we change the LinkedIn company page to be original? Or does it matter? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Localized domains and duplicate content
Hey guys, In my company we are launching a new website and there's an issue it's been bothering me for a while. I'm sure you guys can help me out. I already have a website, let's say ABC.com I'm preparing a localized version of that website for the uk so we'll launch ABC.co.uk Basically the websites are going to be exactly the same with the difference of the homepage. They have a slightly different proposition. Using GeoIP I will redirect the UK traffic to ABC.co.uk and the rest of the traffic will still visit .com website. May google penalize this? The site itself it will be almost the same but the homepage. This may count as duplicate content even if I'm geo-targeting different regions so they will never overlap. Thanks in advance for you advice
Technical SEO | | fabrizzio0 -
Index.php and 301 redirect with Joomla
Hi, I'm running Joomla 1.7 with SEF on and I'm trying to do a htaccess redirect which fails. I have approximately 100 in effect so far and all working fine, but I have one snag. Index.php is not working as I need it to when it's redirected to www.myurl.com/ If I turn on index.php redirect to root using this code #index.php to root
Technical SEO | | NaescentAdam
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^myurl.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.myurl.com$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ "http://www.myurl.com/" [R=301,L] And then go to www.myurl.com/test.html I'm redirected to the homepage. I think this is because all pages are index.php in joomla. SEOMOZ and Google both think that index.php and root are duplicate pages. Does anyone have any advice for overcoming this? Thanks, Adam0 -
Converting files from .html to .php or editing .htaccess file
Good day all, I have a bunch of files that are .html and I want to add some .php to them. It seems my 2 options are Convert .html to .php and 301 redirect or add this line of code to my .htaccess file and keep all files that are .html as .html AddType application/x-httpd-php .html My gut is that the 2nd way is better so as not alter any SEO rankings, but wanted to see if anybody had any experience with this line of code in their .htaccess file as definitely don't wan to mess up my entire site 🙂 Thanks for any help! John
Technical SEO | | JohnHerrigel0 -
How to tell if PDF content is being indexed?
I've searched extensively for this, but could not find a definitive answer. We recently updated our website and it contains links to about 30 PDF data sheets. I want to determine if the text from these PDFs is being archived by search engines. When I do this search http://bit.ly/rRYJPe (google - site:www.gamma-sci.com and filetype:pdf) I can see that the PDF urls are getting indexed, but does that mean that their content is getting indexed? I have read in other posts/places that if you can copy text from a PDF and paste it that means Google can index the content. When I try this with PDFs from our site I cannot copy text, but I was told that these PDFs were all created from Word docs, so they should be indexable, correct? Since WordPress has you upload PDFs like they are an image could this be causing the problem? Would it make sense to take the time and extract all of the PDF content to html? Thanks for any assistance, this has been driving me crazy.
Technical SEO | | zazo0