404 for duplicate content?

[waltergah]

Sorry, I think this is my third question today...

But I have a lot of duplicated content on my site. I use joomla so theres a lot of unintentional duplication. For example, www.mysite.com/index.php exists, etc.

Up till now, I thought I had to 301 redirect or rel=canonical these "duplicated pages."

However, can I just 404 it? Is there anything wrong with this rpactice in regards to SEO?

[Francisco_Meza]

I agree with Andy here. Too many 404's can hurt your site. EVEN Google says that in GWT. I wouldn't do any 404s. I would 301 or robot.txt folders.

You may want to robots.txt some folders. Sometimes you can get a plugin and fix things quickly.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Kyu,

Remember, canonical is only a suggestion to google of which page should be delivering the content - it is still up to them what they do. In practice though, this is what many opt for.

301's are a permanent redirect and too many can suggest a poor underlying site - you wouldn't want a 301 for every page if there were a lot of them.

You could also think about Robots to remove some of the duplicated pages so they never get spidered, or just no-index them.

404's for me wouldn't be the ideal scenario because somewhere in the site, it can lead to what is basically a dead page. Too many 404's can actually harm your ranking because when Google spiders and finds them, if you have a large enough site, they could be met with 200+ dead pages!

On some sites, you are able to just remove the pages altogether, but you can't do this with the likes of Joomla.

Think about no-indexing / robots because although the pages will still be there, you are telling Google not to bother. This is the route many SEO's are taking now.

Andy

[danatanseo]

You are very welcome. I think "simpler" could be a relative term All three are appropriate in different situations. However, there are times when people have very limited access to source code or to the backends of their websites, so then one solution might work better than another.

As far as 404s go it's really all about what's best and most appropriate from a user standpoint. If you can guide visitors to content relevant to their search query via a 301-redirect, they are probably going to be more satisfied with that than a 404. This could potentially indirectly effect your SEO because if your bounce rate increases or your 404 pages results in a lot of pogo-sticking by potential visitors, your site could be effected negatively by Googe's algorithm.

When at all possible, I try to do a 301-redirect. But in the cases of really old content that may no longer accurately represent our content or products (and that also doesn't have veyr many inbound links) a 404 might be just fine.

Sorry, that's a bit of a long answer, but I hope it helps!

Dana

[waltergah]

Thanks Dana! Youve been so helpful!

But one thing I am confused about, when i read articles about how to fix duplicate content, they always talk about the best two options being 301 or rel=canonical. Why is that?

Isnt 404 error simpler?

Hmm, or is 404 just simpler in my case beacuse all my duplicated pages are pages that users will never go to?

[danatanseo]

Yes, you could allow those pages to 404 and in some instances that may be preferable to you. No, there is no negative effect on SEO from 404's. The only negative impact is really on your users. To minimize this, you might consider creating a nice, friendly, customer 404 page instead of using Google's defult 404 error page. Hope that helps!

Dana