Using Rel Nofollow on Duplicate Pages
-
Hi there,
I have a rather large site that has duplicate content on many pages due to how it's being spidered by google. I was hoping I could set the internal link to this page as "nofollow."
My question is that I have hundreds of other sites with backlinks to these duplicate content pages.. will this affect me negatively if I tell google not to index the duplicated pages?
-
Nofollow is no longer a way to block indexing of internal links. External yes, internal no.
Chad's answer about canonicals is a good one. Depending on how/why the duplicate pages are created/required example, sort orders or page 2, page 3, page 4 of the same page, you also have a couple of other options:
- Managing url paramaters in Google Webmaster Tools http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687
- Googles rel next and rel prev tags http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
-
Cheers - great answer thanks!
-
I found this page within SEO MOZ that answers the link juice question:
"Will this pass 100% of the link juice from a given page to another? More or less than a 301 redirect does now? Note that Google's official representative from the web spam team, Matt Cutts, said today that it passes link juice akin to a 301 redirect but also noted (when SEOmoz's ownGillian Muessig asked specifically) that "it loses no more juice than a 301," which suggests that there is some fractional loss when either of these are applied."
-
Add this to the top of your pages that you feel have the same content somewhere else on the website.
As far as the backlinks, I am not sure how that will pan-out. In theory they should still flow. I'll have to double check and make sure. However, duplicate content is a big issue. I deal with it on a national level and it is a total nightmare, especially when the site is very large-dynamically produce by a cms that is not seo friendly.
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
-
Quick Fix to "Duplicate page without canonical tag"?
When we pull up Google Search Console, in the Index Coverage section, under the category of Excluded, there is a sub-category called ‘Duplicate page without canonical tag’. The majority of the 665 pages in that section are from a test environment. If we were to include in the robots.txt file, a wildcard to cover every URL that started with the particular root URL ("www.domain.com/host/"), could we eliminate the majority of these errors? That solution is not one of the 5 or 6 recommended solutions that the Google Search Console Help section text suggests. It seems like a simple effective solution. Are we missing something?
Technical SEO | | CREW-MARKETING1 -
Product Variations (rel=canonical or 301) & Duplicate Product Descriptions
Hi All, Hoping for a bit of advice here please, I’ve been tasked with building an e-commerce store and all is going well so far. We decided to use Wordpress with Woocommerce as our shop plugin. I’ve been testing the CSV import option for uploading all our products and I’m a little concerned on two fronts: - Product Variations Duplicate content within the product descriptions **Product Variations: - ** We are selling furniture that has multiple variations (see list below) and as a result it creates c.50 product variations all with their own URL’s. Facing = Left, Right Leg style = Round, Straight, Queen Ann Leg colour = Black, White, Brown, Wood Matching cushion = Yes, No So my question is should I 301 re-direct the variation URL’s to the main product URL as from a user perspective they aren't used (we don't have images for each variation that would trigger the URL change, simply drop down options for the user to select the variation options) or should I add the rel canonical tag to each variation pointing back to the main product URL. **Duplicate Content: - ** We will be selling similar products e.g. A chair which comes in different fabrics and finishes, but is basically the same product. Most, if not all of the ‘long’ product descriptions are identical with only the ‘short’ product descriptions being unique. The ‘long’ product descriptions contain all the manufacturing information, leg option/colour information, graphics, dimensions, weight etc etc. I’m concerned that by having 300+ products all with identical ‘long’ descriptions its going to be seen negatively by google and effect the sites SEO. My question is will this be viewed as duplicate content? If so, are there any best practices I should be following for handling this, other than writing completely unique descriptions for each product, which would be extremely difficult given its basically the same products re-hashed. Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | Jon-S0 -
Duplicate Titles on Wordpress blog pages
Hi, I have an issue where I am getting for duplicate page titles for pages that shouldn't exist. The issue is on the blog index page's (from 0 - 16) and involves the same set of attachment_id for each page, i.e. /blog/page/10/?attachment_id=minack /blog/page/10/?attachment_id=ponyrides /blog/page/11/?attachment_id=minack /blog/page/11/?attachment_id=ponyrides There are 6 attachment_id values (and they are not ID values either) which repeat for every page on the index now what I can't work out is where those 6 links are coming from as on the actual blog index page http://www.bosinver.co.uk/blog/page/10/ there are no links to it and the links just go to blog index page and it ignores the attachment_id value. There is no sitemap.xml file either which I thought might have contained the links. Thanks
Technical SEO | | leapSEO0 -
Duplicate page issue in website
i found duplicate pages in my website. seomoz is showing duplicate web pages this is issue or not please tell me?
Technical SEO | | learningall0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content
Hi All, I am getting warnings about duplicate page content. The pages are normally 'tag' pages. I have some blog posts tagged with multiple 'tags'. Does it really affect my site?. I am using wordpress and Yoast SEO plugin. Thanks
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Is there an easy solution for duplicate page content on a drupal CMS?
I have a drupal 7 site www.australiacounselling.com.au that has over 5000 crawl errors (!). The main problem - close to 3000 errors- is I have duplicate page content. When I create a page I can create a URL alias for the page that is SEO friendly, however every time I do this, it is registering there are 2 pages with the same content. Is there a module that you're aware of that I can have installed that would allow me to show what is the canonical page? My developers seemed stumped and have given up trying to find a solution, but I'm not convinced that it should be that hard. Any ideas from those familiar with drupal 7 would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | ClintonP0 -
NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW - Any SEO benefit to these pages?
Hi I could use some advice on a site architecture decision. I am developing something akin to an affiliate scheme for my business. However it is not quite as simple as an affliate setup because the products sold through "affiliates" will be slightly different, as a result I intend to run the site from a subdomain of my main domain. I am intending to NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW the subdomained site because it will contain huge amounts of duplication from my main site (it is really a subset of the main site with some slightly different functionality in places). I don't really want or need this subdomain site indexed, hence my decision to NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW it. However given I will, hopefully, be having lots of people link into the subdomain I am hoping to come up with some sort of arrangement that will mean that my main domain derives some sort of benefit from the linking. They are, after all, votes for my business so they feel like "good links". I am assuming here that a direct link into my NOFOLLOW,NOINDEX subdomain is going to provide ZERO benefit to my main domain. Happy to be corrected! The best I can come up with is to have a "landing page" on my main domain which links into parts of my main domain and then provides a link through to the subdomain site. However this feels like a bad experience from the user's point of view (i.e. land on a page and then have to click to get to the real action) and feels a bit spammy, i.e. I don't really have a good reason for this page other than linking! Equally I could NOINDEX,FOLLOW the homepage of the affiliate site and link back to the main domain from there. However this also feels a bit spammy and would be far less beneficial, I guess, because the subdomain homepage would have many more outgoing links than I envisaged for my "landing page" idea above. Also, it also looks a bit spammy (i.e. why follow the homepage and nofollow everything else?)! The trouble, I guess, is that whatever I do feels a bit spammy. I suppose this is because IT IS spammy! 🙂 Has anyone got any good ideas how I could setup an arrangement like I described above and derive benefit to my main domain without it looking (or being) spammy? I just hate to think of all of those links being wasted (in an SEO sense). Thanks Gary
Technical SEO | | gtrotter6660 -
If you only want your home page to rank, can you use rel="canonical" on all your other pages?
If you have a lot of pages with 1 or 2 inbound links, what would be the effect of using rel="canonical" to point all those pages to the home page? Would it boost the rankings of the home page? As I understand it, your long-tail keyword traffic would start landing on the home page instead of finding what they were looking for. That would be bad, but might be worth it.
Technical SEO | | watchcases0