Why are my pages getting duplicate content errors?
-
Studying the Duplicate Page Content report reveals that all (or many) of my pages are getting flagged as having duplicate content because the crawler thinks there are two versions of the same page:
http://www.mapsalive.com/Features/audio.aspx
http://www.mapsalive.com/Features/Audio.aspx
The only difference is the capitalization. We don't have two versions of the page so I don't understand what I'm missing or how to correct this. Anyone have any thoughts for what to look for?
-
Dr. Pete doesn't cover case (though it's mentioned in the comments), but just about everything else you might want to know about duplicate content is talked about at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world, including ways to remedy it. It sounds like you've got a plan here, but I'm also adding it for the benefit of others looking at this thread.
-
I think this is one of the most overlooked duplicate content issues. Not sure why it's not talked about as much as it is. I quite often have been using upper and lowercase intermittently. E.g., mysite.com/Las-Vegas/ and mysite.com/las-vegas/, not knowing it made any difference.
I guess a .htaccess rewrite to all lowercase is in order. Thanks SEOMoz. You guys rock.
-
Glad to be of help Janice.
From a readability perspective, in which case I'd suggest to have all lower case.
-
Well, it is a Windows server and my understanding is that it is case-insensitive, but I'll verify this with our hosting provider. Nevertheless, would it be preferable to set up the rewrite from the mixed case names to all lowercase names or vice versa? Or perhaps it doesn't matter.
Thanks for your help with this - lots to learn and work through with these tools.
-
If the server allows upper case and lower case then from a technical perspective they could both be different files. Like having www.domain.com and domain.com point to the same home page - they may be the same, but technically they could be two different places.
The solution should be set up to not require having to do a rewrite every time a new page is created. It should be automatic.
-
I understand your answer and about setting up rewrites, but what I really want to know is why there are two pages listed (one uppercase, one lowercase) when there is only one physical page on the site. All links within the site point to the page using the uppercase name.
I don't want to have to add a rewrite for the lowercase name every time I add a page to the site - this doesn't seem right which is why I'm wondering if there is something else wrong.
-
Janice,
The proper solution would be to have the site set up at the server level to automatically rewrite URLs so they have one consistent pattern (typically all lower case). And to make sure all links within the site pointing to other pages on the site use that preferred capitalization method. While having Canonical tags can help alleviate the problem, they're not a best practices "only" solution. So speak with the site administrator or programmer to get the rewrite functionality implemented.
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
-
Duplicate content, although page has "noindex"
Hello, I had an issue with some pages being listed as duplicate content in my weekly Moz report. I've since discussed it with my web dev team and we decided to stop the pages from being crawled. The web dev team added this coding to the pages <meta name='robots' content='max-image-preview:large, noindex dofollow' />, but the Moz report is still reporting the pages as duplicate content. Note from the developer "So as far as I can see we've added robots to prevent the issue but maybe there is some subtle change that's needed here. You could check in Google Search Console to see how its seeing this content or you could ask Moz why they are still reporting this and see if we've missed something?" Any help much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
Duplicate content analysis
Hi all,We have some pages being flagged as duplicates by the google search console. However, we believe the content on these pages is distinctly different (for example, they have completely different search results returned, different headings etc). An example of two pages google finds to be duplicates is below. if anyone can spot what might be causing the duplicate issue here, would very much appreciate suggestions! Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
Examples: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/harborne
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/accountant/harborne0 -
Joomla: content accesible through all kinds of other links >> duplicate content?!
When i did a site: search on Google i've noticed all kind of URL's on my site were indexed, while i didn't add them to the Joomla navigation (or they were not linked anywhere on the site). Some examples: www.domain.com/1-articlename >> that way ALL articles are publicly visible, even if they are not linked to a menu-item... If by accident such a link get's shared it will be indexed in google, you can have 2 links with same content... www.domain.com/2-uncategorised >> same with categories, automatically these overview pages are visible to people who know this URL. On it you see all the articles that belong to that category. www.domain.com/component/content >> this gives an overview of all the categories inside your Joomla CMS I think most will agree this is not good for your site's SEO? But how can this be solved? Is this some kind of setting within Joomla? Anyone who dealt with these problems already?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
Duplicate Content - Products
When running a report it says we have lots of duplicate content. We are a e-commerce site that has about 45,000 sku's on the site. Products can be in multiple departments on the site. So the same products can show up on different pages of the site. Because of this the reports show multiple products with duplicate content. Is this an issue with google and site ranking? Is there a way to get around this issue?
Technical SEO | | shoedog1 -
An odd duplicate content issue...
Hi all, my developers have just assured me that nothing has changed form last week but in the today's crawl I see all the website duplicated: and the difference on the url is the '/' so basically the duplicated urls are: htts://blabla.bla/crop htts://blabla.bla/crop/ Any help in understanding why is much appreciated. thanks
Technical SEO | | LeadGenerator0 -
Duplicate title tag error
Hi all, I am new to SEO, and we have just launched a new version of our site (kept the domain name the same though). I keep getting errors for duplicate title tags - e.g. www.sandafayre.com/default.aspx and www.sandafayre.com/Default.aspx, www.sandafayre.com/StampAuctions.aspx and www.sandafayre.com/stampauctions.aspx (plus loads others :o). The only difference each time seems to be the capitalisation of the first character - but I though URLs were not case sensitive? I've been advised to add the rel canonical tag to one of the pages, but the problem is I really only have 1 version of each page! Can anybody help please? Many thanks in advance! Nikki
Technical SEO | | Stampy780 -
Removing Duplicate Pages
Hi everyone. I'm sure this falls under novice seo question. But how do i remove duplicate pages from my site. I have not created the pages per say. Their may be a an internal link on a page that links to the page causing the duplication. Do i remove the internal link here is a sample of a duplicate page http://www.ticketplatform.com/about/ticket-industry-news-details/11-03-07/Ticket_Platform_to_help_LilysProject_com_to_raise_money_for_ALYN_Hospital_in_Israel.aspx?ReturnURL=%2fabout%2fticket-industry-news.aspx http://www.ticketplatform.com/about/ticket-industry-news-details/11-03-07/Ticket_Platform_to_help_LilysProject_com_to_raise_money_for_ALYN_Hospital_in_Israel.aspx?ReturnURL=%2fhome.aspx&CntPageID=1 I know the url is way too long. working on it Thanks for your feedbacks.
Technical SEO | | ticketplatform0