20 000 duplicates in Moz crawl due to Joomla URL parameters. How to fix?
-
We have a problem of massive duplicate content in Joomla. Here is an example of the "base" URL: http://www.binary-options.biz/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html
For some reason Joomla creates many versions of this URL, for example:
or
So it lists the URL parameter ?q= and then repeats part of the beforegoing URL. This leads to tens of thousands duplicate pages in our content heavy site.
Any ideas how to fix this? Thanks so much!
-
These are caused by the links to your language pages. If you click one of the language links from within the source code (not on the page) it redirects to a URL with '?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html' added. Then if you click the same language link on that page it again redirects to another page with previous URL added to the end:
?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html.e.g:
On the example page view source, search for German and click the link below:
This link 301 redirects too:
http://www.binary-options.biz/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html Then if you view source, search for German and click the link again:
This link 301 redirects too:
So basically every time a web crawler follows a language link, new URLs are being created with the previous URL added to the end, causing a never ending crawl as an infinite amount of new pages will always be created.
I don't think this is connected with the Joomla SEF as Chris pointed out, as your URLs are already SEF.
However it's not an easy thing to identify how to fix the issue with the language links. You should probably speak to the developer who implemented it and/or the creator of the plugin if it is a plugin.
Also do you even need this functionality? As none of the language links work, they just redirect back the main site.
-
Surely your URL structure is not fine.Can you please try this fix and update me?
http://docs.joomla.org/Enabling_Search_Engine_Friendly_(SEF)_URLs_on_Apache
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
-
Use existing page with bad URL or brand new URL?
Hello, We will be updating an existing page with more helpful information with the goal of reaching more potential customers through SEO and also attaching a SEM campaign to the specific landing page. The current URL of the page scores 25 on Page Authority, and has 2 links to it from blog articles (PA 35, 31). The current content needs to be rewritten to be more helpful and also needs some additional information. The downsides are that it has an "bad" URL- no target keyword and uses underscores. Which of the following choices would you make? 1. Update this old "bad" URL with new content. Benefit from the existing PA. -or- 2. Start with a new optimized URL, reusing some of the old content and utilizing a 301 redirect from the previous page? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | XLMarketing0 -
Self referencing canonicals AND duplicate URLs. Have I set them up correctly?
Hi team, We've recently redesigned our website. Originally we had separate product listings for every product. Even if there was one design in two colours, each colour had its own listing. With the redesign we merged all of these identical products to help with duplicate content. Customers can now browse the different stone colours available in that design from a single product listing (bottom left of screen under 'select a stone' on a product page) When the customer changes the stone colour, the product images change to the new colour and its product code is appended to the end of the existing URL. eg: http://www.mountainjade.co.nz/necklaces/assorted-jades-open-koru-necklace-jc1725/ (original listing) http://www.mountainjade.co.nz/necklaces/assorted-jades-open-koru-necklace-jc1725/?sku=JC1725BL (black selected) We have the following self referencing canonicals on all product pages [current-page:url:absolute], yet MOZ is telling me I have alot of duplicate content on pages with the above example. Have I implemented the canonicals correctly? Is this why Moz is flagging the listings as duplicate?
Technical SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi, we need some help on resolving this duplicate content issue,. We have redirected both domains to this magento website. I guess now Google considered this as duplicate content. Our client wants both domain name to go to the same magento store. What is the safe way of letting Google know these are same company? Or this is not ideal to do this? thanks
Technical SEO | | solution.advisor0 -
Sort parameters and overly dynamic URLs
Howdy mozzers I have a car dealership site with an inventory page that allows users to specify dealer location, model, make, year, etc. with drop-down menus. Each new choice changes the URL parameters and unspecified categories appear as "...&model=&year=..." I've attended to the URL parameters in Webmaster Tools, and according to Google's new URL parameters video, it looks like they've got a handle on navigating the site. That said, I do get warnings in my seomoz crawls that these URLs are overly dynamic (there are up to 12 parameters per URL). How concerned should I be? How would the Moz community suggest handling this many parameters in my URLs? Thanks as always
Technical SEO | | jamesm5i0 -
Backslash in URL
my main URL is www.americanmusical.com, SEOMOZ shows I have a duplicate page title on www.americanmusical.com/. I have the think the backslash is causing other issues. I noticed when I first go to my site it is without the /, but if I navigate to the home page, the URL has the / in it. Any ideas on if this is a problem or how to handle it?
Technical SEO | | dianeb1520 -
How to Fix Duplicate Content Issue of Manufacturer Details Paragraph?
I am surviving with Google's crawling issue. Google had not index my product pages yet. I have Google a lot and read too many articles to get it done. But, I did not get satisfy answer with it. I just checked my product pages and found that: There is one tab with Manufacturers Details containing one paragraph. This content is available on too many product pages with same manufacturer. You can know more by visiting following URL. http://www.vistastores.com/indoorlighting-elklighting-d1472.html So, Does it matter to stop my crawling? If yes so How can I fix it?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Ignore url parameters without the 'parameter=' ?
We are working on an ecommerce site that sorts out the products by color and size but doesn't use the sortby= but uses sortby/. Can we tell Google to ignore the sortby/ parameter in Webmaster Tools even though it is not followed by an = sign? For example: www.mysite.com/shirts/tshirts/shopby/size-m www.mysite.com/shirts/tshirts/shopby/color-black Can we tell WMT to ignore the 'shopby/' parameter so that only the tshirts page will be indexed? Or does the shopby have to be set up as 'shopby=' ? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0 -
Duplicate Content from Google URL Builder
Hello to the SEOmoz community! I am new to SEOmoz, SEO implementation, and the community and recently set up a campaign on one of the sites I managed. I was surprised at the amount of duplicate content that showed up as errors and when I took a look in deeper, the majority of errors were caused by pages on the root domain I put through Google Analytics URL Builder. After this, I went into webmaster tools and changed the parameter handling to ignore all of the tags the URL Builder adds to the end of the domain. SEOmoz recently recrawled my site and the errors being caused by the URL Builder are still being shown as duplicates. Any suggestions on what to do?
Technical SEO | | joshuaopinion0