Duplicate content error?

[BlueLinkERP]

I am seeing an error for duplicate content for the following pages:

http://www.bluelinkerp.com/contact/

http://www.bluelinkerp.com/contact/index.asp

Doesn't the first URL just automatically redirect to the default page in that directory (index.asp)? Why is it showing up as separate duplicate pages?

[Dr-Pete]

@Streamline is right - as soon as the engines encounter both versions, they see it as two pages. It's no problem for human visitors, but it can create issues with duplicate URLs in the Google index. You can either 301-redirect the "index.asp" version back to the cleaner, root URL or use a canonical. ASP/.Net can be weird about 301s, so the canonical is probably easier.

Generally, we suggest people canonical to the shorter/friendlier version, but the trouble here is that you're using the "/index.asp" version in your internal links. If you can change the internal links to the "/contact/" version, I'd prefer that, but if not, then set the canonical tag to the "/index.asp" version. The most important thing is consistency. If you link to one version but canonical to the other, Google could ignore your canonical tag. Put simply, your canonical URL isn't really canonical, in that case.

[BlueLinkERP]

Thanks for the response! Is it best practice to specify the canonical URL as the "unspecific" link? Should I not rather specify the canonical URL as "http://www.bluelinkerp.com/contact/index.asp"?

[BenFox]

They're two different URLs.

If the URL changes but the content stays the same then it's classed as duplicate content.

I feel your pain though - the amount of duplicate pages I've ended up with just because copywriters like to capitalize their words...

[StreamlineMetrics]

There's several possible ways the search engines could have come across both versions of that page. If I had to guess, it's because somewhere on the web or even on your own website there are links to both URLs. It's a pretty common issue but one that is easily resolved with the rel="canonical" tag.

Simply put the following code in the header of that page -

This tells the search engines to use your designated URL anytime they access that page.