Duplicate page titles in SEOMoz
-
My on page reports are showing a good number of duplicate title tags, but they are all because of a url tracking parameter that tells us which link the visitor clicked on. For example, http://www.example.com/example-product.htm?ref=navside and http://www.example.com/example-product.htm are the same page, but are treated as to different urls in SEOMoz. This is creating "fake" number of duplicate page titles in my reports.
This has not been a problem with Google, but SEOMoz is treating it like this and it's confusing my data. Is there a way to specify this as a url parameter in the Moz software?
Or does anybody have another suggestion? Should I specify this in GWT and BWT?
-
The best way to handle this, for all crawlers including Google, Yahoo and Moz, is to make sure you have proper canonical tags on those URLs that point to the non-parameterized URL.
So http://www.example.com/example-product.htm?ref=navside will have a canonical that points to http://www.example.com/example-product.htm
-
My understanding is that the Moz crawlers should be checking the canonical, in which case it will ignore duplicate content and title tag issues. If you find this is not the case with your crawl, please let our help team know at help @ moz.com
-
No, Moz's tool won't check the canonical to see if that would ignore this.
-
Do you think that setting a canonical url tag might help fix this?
-
Hi Robert,
Yes, I'm sorry but you're overlooking something. Ignoring parameters is something you should do in regards to SEO. It won't stop Google Analytics tracking these parameters.
-
I'm not sure why I'd want to ask google to ignore those parameters... we're explicitly adding the ones that they suggested we use from here:
The issue that I'm having is that Moz analytics is showing duplicate pages as an issue to resolve when the only difference is that these params exist.
Am I overlooking something here?
-
Hi Robert,
I wouldn't handle this via robots.txt if you only want to do this for Rogerbot. The best way to tell Google to ignore your UTM parameters is via Google Webmaster Tools. Under Crawl > URL Parameters you've got the option to add parameters that don't change any of the content and are solely used for tracking purposes.
-
I'm having a similar issue. Is there an example of how to add this to the robots.txt file to ignore the utm stuff for RogerBot?
Our scenario is that we send out PDFs with links to pages on our site and those links have utm parameters included... and are showing up as duplicate content.
Thanks in advance,
Robby
-
I think this is the answer I was looking for... Yeah, GWT already has a bunch of our parameters added, and hasn't had a problem with this one. It's not showing these pages as duplicate like SEOMoz does.
Thanks guys!
-
Hi,
What you might want to do to get rid of this issues within SEOMoz is add the parameters to your robots.txt file and specifically target the user agent of SEOMoz: Rogerbot. This way SEOMoz won't crawl the links with this parameter and by doing that also won't warn you about these duplicate titles.
Hope this helps!
Btw. As James already mentioned I would also recommend to configure these parameters within Google Webmaster Tools.
-
You could set it up in GWT but it sounds like you are using utm tags on internal links so you can see which physical links on a page are driving clicks. If that's the case a cleaner solution is to upgrade your Google Analytics code for enhanced link attribution. I'm assuming you are using GA but if so this will allow you to see which links are driving which clicks and won't create tons of duplicate page titles in SEOmoz.
See link: http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2558867
Let me know if you have questions,
JS
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
-
Since July 1, we've had a HUGE jump in errors on our weekly crawl. We don't think anything has changed on our website. Has MOZ changed something that would account for a large leap in duplicate content and duplicate title errors?
Our error report went from 1,900 to 18,000 in one swoop, starting right around the first of July. The errors are duplicate content and duplicate title, as if it does not see our 301 redirects. Any insights?
Moz Pro | | KristyFord0 -
Duplicate content in SEOMOZ report
Hi guys, The SEOMOZ report shows there is duplicate content on my Magento ecommerce: footdistrict.com Example: http://footdistrict.com/nike-air-royalty-386169602.html?___store=footdistrict_en Duplicate content shown on the report: http://footdistrict.com/marcas/puma.html?___store=footdistrict_en
Moz Pro | | footd
http://footdistrict.com/new-balance-m400rk.html?___store=footdistrict_en
http://footdistrict.com/new-balance-gm500mbn.html?___store=footdistrict_en
http://footdistrict.com/new-balance-m400nnb.html?___store=footdistrict_en My guess is that this is due to the fixed footer that we have set where modal windows pop up with delivery info and so on. As such, all the content within it is repeated through all the pages What do you recommend me to remove this duplicate content? I have read about duplicate content issues but they don't usually deal with div tag duplicate issues, modal windows and so on. Thanks Regards0 -
How does SEOmoz pull its duplicate page title and content information?
I ask because I am getting errors based on URLs that do not even exist on our site. For example: http://www.robots.com/applications/abb/panasonic/robots this URL does not even exist for our site, but somehow it is listed in the error section of page title duplication tool. http://www.robots.com/applications/ exists, but there is no place to get to an ABB or a Panasonic robot from this page, not to mention an ABB/Panasonic (which for sure does not exist). ?? We have quite a few of these out there and just wondering how to find out where the link is coming from. When we checked our URLs through Integrity, links like the one listed above (which we had 29 of them listed) that do not show up. Thoughts? Thanks! Janelle
Moz Pro | | jwanner0 -
SEOmoz Campaign Setup: What would you do?
I've been using moz for nearly a year now. Initially when I set up our site (rac.com.au) it was as a single campaign for the rac.com.au domain. However, our business has a number of different product offerings and marketing teams (Insurance, finance, travel/tourism, automotive, security etc) - would I be better off setting each of these 'sub' brands as a campaign on their own using the 'folder' campaign setup? For example, have a campaign setup for the Insurance business (rac.com.au/insurance) folder, Finance business (rac.com.au/finance) and so forth? The advantage I see to the folder campaign setup is more specific reporting for each of the business units. Are there disadvantages to this? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Cheers Ryan
Moz Pro | | Hutch_e0 -
I've got quite a few "Duplicate Page Title" Errors in my Crawl Diagnostics for my Wordpress Blog
Title says it all, is this an issue? The pages seem to be set up properly with Rel=Canonical so should i just ignore the duplicate page title erros in my Crawl Diagnostics dashboard? Thanks
Moz Pro | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
URL paramters and duplicate content
Hello, I have a 2-fold question: Crawl Diagnostics is picking up a lot of Duplicate Page Title errors, and as far as I can tell, all of them are cause by URL parameters trailing the URL. We use a Magento store, and all filtering attributes, categories, product pages etc are tagged on as URL parameters. example: Main URL:
Moz Pro | | yacpro13
/accessories.html Duplicated Title Page URLs: /accessories.html?dir=asc&order=position
/accessories.html?mode=list
/accessories.html?mode=grid
...and many others How can I make the Crawl Diagnostics not identify these as errors? Now from an SEO point of view, all these URL parameters are been picked up by google, and are listed in WedMaster Tools -> URL parameters. All URL parameters are set to "let google decide". I remember having read that Google was smart enough here to make the right decision, and we shouldn't have to worry about it. Is this true, or is there a larger issue at hand here? Thankas!0 -
Seomoz keyword difficulty api
Is there a way to get this from an api or a better method than pasting 5 keywords at a time into the keyword difficulty tool to get these numbers?
Moz Pro | | insitegoogle0 -
Transfering Page Authority
Hi, I have recently change my url architecture with site redesign and was just doing some analysis of the old and new pages. I seem to be losing a little bit of Organic Search because of it. As an example this old diving page in open site explorer shows a Page Authority of 46 whilst the new diving page shows a Page Authority of 22. I have a 301 redirect going from the old page to the new, but that seems to be quite a drop in Page Authority. Is there anything else I can be doing to improve upon it? Thanks, Adam
Moz Pro | | NaescentAdam0