SEOMoz Crawler vs Googlebot Question
-
I read somewhere that SEOMoz’s crawler marks a page in its Crawl Diagnostics as duplicate content if it doesn’t have more than 5% unique content.(I can’t find that statistic anywhere on SEOMoz to confirm though).
We are an eCommerce site, so many of our pages share the same sidebar, header, and footer links. The pages flagged by SEOMoz as duplicates have these same links, but they have unique URLs and category names. Because they’re not actual duplicates of each other, canonical tags aren’t the answer. Also because inventory might automatically come back in stock, we can’t use 301 redirects on these “duplicate” pages.
It seems like it’s the sidebar, header, and footer links that are what’s causing these pages to be flagged as duplicates. Does the SEOMoz crawler mimic the way Googlebot works? Also, is Googlebot smart enough not to count the sidebar and header/footer links when looking for duplicate content?
-
Google bot definitely won't ding you for duplicate content based upon you sidebar, header, and footer links. I've managed several ecommerce sites and have never had this problem.
However, it may still ding you for duplicate content if you have several matching pages with you main column being the same.
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
-
Critical crawler errors...4xx
Hey fam, I ran the Critical Crawler Issues and found 9 pages with critical crawler issues. I'm running a wordpress site and looked in the dashboard for Pages and Posts but the links aren't in the dashboard. Can you help fix? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Myflgreen0 -
HTTPS vs HTTP
A few months ago we switched all product page urls in our e-commerce site to https: Recently working on the site I was appalled at how slow our pages were loading and on investigating further with our hosting partner they advised to switch back to http instead of https for all of the site content to help page speed. We obviously still need to use https in the cart and check-out. I think that that Google will be pushing all commerce web pages to https but for now I need to improve page load speed. Will the switch back from https to http impair our keywords? https://www.silverandpewtergifts.com/
Technical SEO | | silverpewter0 -
Mobile website question
Hi Mozzers, A website I manage has a mobile friendly version of their main website and a /m version as well. I was wondering if anyone had any experience in the best way of handling this? Should we just get rid of the /m version and tag the mobile friendly version? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | KarlBantleman0 -
Newbie Duplicate Title Question
We recently update our website with DNN 6. Once the upgrade was done, I kept recieving log in links on my duplicate title and duplicate content error reports. Is anyone familiar with how to stop these links from showing up? Example of link: http://www.faisongroup.com/Login/tabid/750/Default.aspx?returnurl=%2F Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | VeronicaCFowler0 -
Will a timed 301 redirect work for Googlebot?
Our client is changing brand names and domain names. We know we need to 301 redirect the old domain, but for marketing reasons we want people to see a short message saying that the brand has changed and that they will be redirected. Example: | | Our concern is how, or if, Googlebot will intepret the redirect. Will this accomplish our SEO objective of moving the value of the page to the new domain, or do we need to do just a plain old fashioned 301 redirect and not even let the page load? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | GOODSIR0 -
Another http vs https Question?
Is it better to keep the Transaction/ Payment pages on a commercial website as the only secure ones (https) and remainder of website as http? Or is it better to have all the commercial website as secure (https)?
Technical SEO | | sherohass0 -
Mobile Domain \ URL Structure SEO questions
Hi We are making a mobile site for our site for one of our partner sites and I would like to know which one of the following URL structure you recommand as far as SEO concerned? mobile.mywebsite.com or mywebsite.mobi Also, should I worry about duplicated content on my mobile site?
Technical SEO | | CookingCom0 -
Thesis Vs Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin
Hi All. I've noticed some issues between the thesis themes and Yoast's plugin, namely, thesis doesn't recognise Yoast's plugin in for title tag and meta description. Is there a way to overide this?
Technical SEO | | PerchDigital0