Why is Moz Reporting as Duplicate Page Titles?
-
Our most recent MOZ crawl campaign is reporting 931 duplicate page title errors, most of which are "Product Review" pages like the following. Although there is only one review on this page, http://www.audiobooksonline.com/Cell_Stephen_King_unabridged_compact_discs.html, MOZ is reporting 15 duplicate page title, four of which I present below.
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/full/0743554337/0/name/desc
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/full/0743554337/0/rating/asc
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/full/0743554337/0/rating/desc
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/full/0743554337/0/state/ascWhy is MOZ reporting these "pages" as duplicate page title errors?
Are these errors hurting our SEO?
How to fix?
-
Hello Larry,
Yes this is a problem for you, and could be harming your rankings. Google has hundreds of those review pages indexed from your domain already: http://goo.gl/Ey7w4c
There are a number of ways to deal with this issue, as outlined below:
1. The quickest, easiest way to get them out of the index is to use the URL Removal Tool in Google Webmaster Tools to remove the entire /reviews/ directory from the index. Then you can place a disallow statement in your robots.txt file to block the entire /reviews/ directory from being crawled and indexed again in the future. The downside of this is that you won't get much, if any, "credit" for links pointing to those review pages. However, I doubt anyone is linking to them to begin with.
2. You could put a rel canonical tag on the review pages, which would point to the product page for which the review was left. For example, http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/full/0743554337/0/name/desc would have this as a rel canonical tag:
3. You could 301 redirect the review pages to the product page, as someone else suggested, but I think this would cause all sorts of unintended errors and redirects on your reviews platform. I don't recommend this route.
4. You could use a noindex,follow meta tag on the review pages.
Googlebot and Mozbot, and their respective indexes, behave differently. You're not always going to get the exact same numbers from GWT that you get from Moz.com. Use Moz.com to identify critical issues on your site, rather than expecting it to give the same broken link count, 404 error, duplicate page count, etc... as Google.
I hope this helps give you some options. Also, I recently wrote an article that I think might help you:
eCommerce Product Review SolutionsGood luck!
-
When I type in to Safari or any web browser the link
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/Cell_Stephen_King_unabridged_compact_discs.html
I get
Sucuri.net a great tool
Tells me thisScan for: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/cell_stephen_king_unabridged_compact_discs.html
Hostname: www.audiobooksonline.com
IP address: 216.38.0.121System Details:
Running on: Apache
Unable to properly scan your site. Site returning error (40x): HTTP/1.1 404 Not FoundWeb application details:
Application: ShopSite Pro 11 sp2 r5.1 (data - sd360_page_template.html)
Google Analytics installed: UA-10432774-2& shop site said this.
http://support.shopsite.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9440
Hope this helps.
Thomas -
PS having capital letters in URLs is never a good idea. It can create duplicate content in the eyes of Google for Lenox user or most of us. So if you can never use capital letters in URLs and if it is an issue sometimes you will have to 301 redirect to a cleaned up URL with 100% lowercase letters
-
Hi Larry,
I think what Chris said is right on the money however it only really helps you with Google so other search engines will still see this is duplicate content fortunately that doesn't mean very much of the market is being affected however if I were you I'd rather fix it for good.
This link shows what to do and almost the exact issue you're having right now is there example
http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
& this is a link to a 301 redirect generator
http://www.htaccessredirect.com
Remember to also use a
Rel=Canonical put this tag in the correct page you want to show people.Then do a 301 redirect on the pages that are duplicates
Examples
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/full/0743554337/0/name/desc
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/full/0743554337/0/rating/asc
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/full/0743554337/0/rating/desc
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/full/0743554337/0/state/ascPoint them so there is only one
Screaming frog spider Seo
Is an amazing tool that if you purchase it will allow you to do the redirects however you can see the issues very clearly and websites under 500 pages using the free version websites with over 500 pages in order to see all the pages you must purchase it which gives you the power to redirect and cleanup sites extremely quicklyI hope this helps,
Thomas -
Our Google Webmaster Tools reports 18 duplicate page titles. Mox crawl reported 931. ????
-
"Our page http://www.audiobooksonline.com/Cell_Stephen_King_unabridged_compact_discs.html has ONLY one review however the MOZ crawl is picking up fifteen different page addresses. Evidently the Review module is creating all these page addresses."
You may want to take a look in you Google Webmaster Tools and see which pages appear there for duplicate page titles. I think your website might have a :/sortby or /rankby feature that produces those extra pages. If that is the case you can set up "URL Parameters" field in webmaster tools that will tell Google not to count those as pages.
I hope this helps.
-
Thomas; Thank you for looking at this issue. You are correct that each page title is the same.
A PHP based "Review" module creates a form allowing folks to enter their review and then assigns a page address. We have no direct ability of assigning page titles for reviews.
Our page http://www.audiobooksonline.com/Cell_Stephen_King_unabridged_compact_discs.html has ONLY one review however the MOZ crawl is picking up fifteen different page addresses. Evidently the Review module is creating all these page addresses.
Any idea if these multiple product review pages are hurting our SERPs?
-
they are being accurate in their report
please look at your webpages source code and look at your title for every one of those links it is the same
Product Review - Cell: Stephen King - CD audiobook
Luckily a simple fix is at hand.
Use this link to take you to a great free tool which will allow you to build the title tags along with description if you feel it necessary. Description is important if you want to rank well as it needs to tell possible visitors what they can expect.
I made a example of what I would do in your situation I don't know if they're part to or not but that's how I differentiated them. Whatever information the page contains should be written out in the title tag along with the description you can also put the author and I would not waste time using keywords they are obsolete.
Your original title tag
<title>Product Review - Cell: Stephen King - CD audiobook</title>
my example
<title>Product Review part two - Cell: Stephen King - CD audiobook</title>
Was made with
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/meta-tag-generator/
I hope this is of help,
Thomas
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
-
No Ranking Keywords in Moz
I am using the link explorer to search my website https://bestsportsmask.com/ in Moz. But it is showing no ranked keywords but in other tools it's showing some keywords. What could be the issue.
Moz Pro | | DanielMaier0 -
Benchmark report for client
Hello, Wondering if someone can tell me how to make a clean, professional report of the most important SEO metrics for a client, from a month ago. I have MozPro and want to be able to see where we stood in rankings, links, crawl issues, landing page, PA/DA, etc when we began. I am thinking that there has got to be a way I can customize a report in Pro and then, if not all the info I want is there (traffic stats?), I can integrate that info in? Is there an easier way? I should've done it when I signed up and started working on the site, but....I didn't. ;( Thanks!
Moz Pro | | lfrazer1230 -
Page authority
Hello, How can my page authority be different across various page built exactly on the same model and none of them having links ? Thank you,
Moz Pro | | seoanalytics0 -
URL Parameters causing duplicate content - Login/Registration page
All, I just recently acquired a new client and right away I noticed an abundance of duplicate content being recorded after the moz crawl diagnostics was completed. After a quick digest of the issue, it seems that the majority (90%) of the outlined duplicated content is stemming from the client's Login/Registration page. Upon clicking (without being logged-in) any asset or forum discussion board link within the site, the user is automatically redirected to the Login/Registration page, which seems to create this massive redirect loop associated with dynamic url parameters. Ex. After clicking on a select internal link (asset or discussion board) the user is redirected to the Login/Register page which presents the page and a URL that looks a lot this this: Ex. 1 https://www.clientsite.com/register-login?ReturnUr...xxxx%xxxx%xxxx%...... Ex. 2 https://www.clientsite.com**/register-login?returnurl=/register-login?returnurl=/register-login?returnurl=/page-titl**e/ These URLs seem to becoming larger and larger... The client wants to ensure users have to Login/Register within their site before they're allowed to view the content. This process doesn't allow for any type of preview page to be viewed by a user prior to clicking on the internal link, which in turn doesn't allow any preview pages to be indexed. Right now, Moz is picking up all of the redirect and labeling them as duplicate page content/duplicate page titles based on the Login/Registration page. Questions/Comments: Would it be wise to create preview pages for the asset pages and discussion board pages to allow for proper indexing? - Could this be a CMS issue? Current being used on this is, Kentico. There are thousands of pages being recorded in the crawl as duplicate, however only 14 seem to be indexing with duplicate title tags. 301 or canonical redirect strategy? Moz crawl data issue? Again, this is my first look at this issue, so more information is bound to come out soon! Please let me know if anyone has run into this issue and if you have a possible solution to get rid of this redirect loop process. Thanks! -T
Moz Pro | | MattLacuesta0 -
Error in Moz duplicate content reports
Hi - I've run the Moz campaign on a client's site. Moz is saying that there are duplicate content errors, and when I look at the errors it is showing that they are all to do with the non-www URLs having being duplicated in the www form of the URLs. However this is not the case - all the non-www URLs are all 301 redirected to the www URLs. Is this an error in the Moz tool? Has anybody experienced something similar?
Moz Pro | | rorynatkiel0 -
Ranking Report
Hi! Can you please tell me why ranking report showing No data at page authority and link to root domain. Does it mean SEOmoz not completed the report? Please check my attachment here with. Thank you in advance. Nodata.jpg
Moz Pro | | Webworld_Norway0 -
90% of our sites that are designed are in wordpress and the report brings up "duplicate" content errors. I presume this is down to a conical error?
We are looking at getting the Agency version of SEOMoz and are based in the UK Could you please tell me what would be the best way to correct this issue as this appears to be a problem with all our clients websites. an example would be www.fsgenergy.co.uk Would you also be able to suggest the best SEO plugin to use with SEOMOz ? Many thanks Paul
Moz Pro | | KloodLtd1 -
Title too long
When I look at the Crawl Results for Title Too Long, I receive several pages of results. If I want to print these results as a PDF, only the first page prints. When I go to the Next Page and attempt to create a PDF of the second page of results, the PDF only contains results from the first page - which I have already printed. When I ask for a CSV of the results, I receive ALL of the results but NOT the "over by x characters" that I see in the online results and in the PDF. The "over by x characters" would be very helpful! How can I get PDF printouts of ALL pages of the results, not just the first page? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | OliverVT0