Index.php + external site added to end of URL
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Good day, I have a domain http://www.ecofriendlylink.com. I am trying to resolve the Crawl Diagnostic errors on it. I have several Duplicate Page Content errors.
Example 1:
(The domain happynewyou is not mine, some Comments from them have been placed on my site. Ecoshop.php is a page on my site).
URL: http://www.ecofriendlylink.com
Duplicate Page Content: http://www.ecofriendlylink.com/www./happynewyou.com/ecoshop.php
Referrer: None.
Example 2:
URL: http://ecofriendlylink.com/index.php
Duplicate Page Content: http://www.ecofriendlylink.com/index.php http://www.ecofriendlylink.com/www./happynewyou.com/index.php
Referrer: http://ecofriendlylink.com/
Example 3: is a different problem, but still a Dup Page Error.
URL: http://ecofriendlylink.com/water.php
Duplicate Page Content: http://www.ecofriendlylink.com/water.php
Referrer: http://ecofriendlylink.com/
water.php is a page on my main domain. The www version and the non-www version, if this a problem and something I need to overcome?
So please can you advise what I need to do to get rid of this strange external domain name + index.php (as per examples 1 + 2), and explain what I'm doing wrong with Ex 3.
Thank you!
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Thank you very much for your prompt response!
I shall Google defining the 404 page in .htaccess, I'm sure I'll have these errors fixed in no time, and that makes sense re the home page.
Thank you!
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Example 1: Your 404 page is not defined, so whenever an incorrect link is typed, the server returns a 200 OK and it just loads the home page. Somewhere on your site there is a bad link, so when the crawl followed it and returned a 200 OK , it recorded it as a real page and since it simply loads your home page, it is a duplicate. You need to define a 404 page in htaccess so this does not happen.
Example 2 + 3: the crawler is counting the following pages as your home page:
http://ecofriendlylink.com/index.php
http://www.ecofriendlylink.com/
http://wwwecofriendlylink.com/index.php
Thats because your home page can legitimately be loaded all 4 ways. This is a little different than Example 1 since these variations are normal. I suggest adding a non-www to www redirect in htaccess, as well as a redirect that forces a removal of the index.php.
However - before you do that! You should:
a) check to see where a majority of your external links point to (use www.opensiteexplorer.com). If the majority of them point to the non-www version then you may consider redirecting www to non-www. Also, check your internal links. If you redirect www to non-www or if you remove the index.php with a redirect, make sure that all internal links pointing home point to the proper URL. (so if you did a non-www to www redirect, and removed the index.php with a redirect, make sure all of your internal links point to http://www.ecofriendlylink.com/)
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