Duplicate Content
-
I'm currently working on a site that sells appliances. Currently, there are thousands of "issues" with this site, many of them dealing with duplicate content. Now, the product pages can be viewed in "List" or "Grid" format. As Lists, they have very little in the way of content.
My understanding is that the duplicate content arises from different URLs going to the same site. For instance, the site might have a different URL when told to display 9 items than when told to display 15. This could then be solved by inserting rel = canonical.
Is there a way to take a site and get a list of all possible duplicates? This would be much easier than slogging through every iteration of the options and copying down the URLs. Also, is there anything I might be missing in terms of why there is duplicate content? Thank you.
-
Thank you.
-
Essentially, you need to figure out the primary causes of duplicate content and then pick a way to handle it. A great spot to find your duplicate content is in Google Webmaster Tools under the HTML Improvements section. Look at the section titled "Duplicate Title Tags" and this will show you a spot where you very well may have duplicate content.
The primary ways to take care of it will be:
- NoIndexing
- Canonicalizing
- Parameter Handling in Google Webmaster Tools
Choosing which technique you use will likely be a result of what you are technically able to implement, based on each unique challenge from the different causes of duplicate content. You likely won't be able to kill all of the duplicate content at once. I suggest handling it in chunks. For example, first tackle the Items Shown problem you reference in your question. As you mentioned, you could canonicalize it. Basically, whenever the URL reflects your Item Parameter, you could canonicalize it back to the representative URL.
ie: yoursite.com/category-results&items=15 --> would canonicalize to yoursite.com/category-results
Once you have the Number of Item pages out of the index, focus on the next biggest cause of duplicate content.
-
Have you created a Moz campaign for the site? As Mozbot crawls your site and tells you about all the duplicate content issues that you may have.
To solve that, instead of checking of changing code all over the place, make the changes on those pages that you already know have duplicate content issues (like in the example you gave) and then let Mozbot re-crawl the site so you can see which pages still have issues to solve them.
The rel canonical should point to the one page that has the most info (as you said list has less, grid will be better for the canonical).
If your site uses several categories and subcategories, you should also have a look at the noindex tag, as sometimes that creates duplicate content issues too (subcategory products listed in the root category). The same applies to any kind of listings, such as search results (which should be noindexed).
Hope this helps!
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
-
Duplicate content in sidebar
Hi guys. So I have a few sentences (about 50 words) of duplicate content across all pages of my website (this is a repeatable text in sidebar). Each page of my website contains about 1300 words (unique content) in total, and 50 words of duplicate content in sidebar. Does having a duplicate content of this length in sidebar affect the rankings of my website in any way? Thank you so much for your replies.
On-Page Optimization | | AslanBarselinov1 -
Is this hidden content?
Hi all, I was wondering if the homepage of www.dirtylooks.com has hidden content in a search engines eyes. There is some text which appears underneath a tile called "hair tools" that has to be scrolled in order to be viewed by a visitor. As this isn't the typical white on white or off page by CSS hidden content are we in danger of being penalised?
On-Page Optimization | | BenfromBNKR0 -
Duplicate Content Re: Product listing body copy on Website, Amazon & Ebay - issues ?
Hi Is it ok to have identical product body copy on market/platform listings same as the websites product listings ? In this case the products are the websites/own brand products (all pages canonicalised), so i take it shouldn't cause any issues or are you supposed to differentiate the product body copy on marketplace listings ? Im asking re seo reasons All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Using a lightbox - possible duplicate content issues
Redesigning website in Wordpress and going to use the following lightbox plug-in http://www.pedrolamas.pt/projectos/jquery-lightbox/ Naming the original images that appear on screen as say 'sweets.jpg'
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-C
and the bigger version of the images as 'sweets-large.jpg' Alt text wise I would give both versions of the images slightly different descriptions. Do you think there would be any duplicate content issues with this? Anything I should do differently? I'm very wary of doing anything that Google is likely to think is naughty, so want to stay on their good side! Cheers
T0 -
Duplicating content on multiple domains
Hey guys, I've started working with a new client recently called Resource Investing News. I'm more a Social Media person, though I do have SEO experience. RIN has about 40 URLs all of which have original news content published on them. One SEO-related issue that I can see here though is that the primary domain re-publishes all of the original content that the other URLs do. In other words: resourceinvestingnews.com will have an article on it that is also published on goldinvestingnews.com with the same date stamp and a link out to the original article. E.g. http://resourceinvestingnews.com/42539-molybdenum-goes-far-beyond-steelmaking.html http://molyinvestingnews.com/5301-molybdenum-steelmaking-vehicle-demand-electronics-lubricant.html Does anyone have an idea if this is something that should be reviewed and/or whether the content is being negatively affected in search? Many thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | blahblahblah20150 -
How woud you deal with Blog TAGS & CATEGORY listings that are marked a 'duplicate content' in SEOmoz campaign reports?
We're seeing "Duplicate Content" warnings / errors in some of our clients' sites for blog / event calendar tags and category listings. For example the link to http://www.aavawhistlerhotel.com/news/?category=1098 provides all event listings tagged to the category "Whistler Events". The Meta Title and Meta Description for the "Whistler Events" category is the same as another other category listing. We use Umbraco, a .NET CMS, and we're working on adding some custom programming within Umbraco to develop a unique Meta Title and Meta Description for each page using the tag and/or category and post date in each Meta field to make it more "unique". But my question is .... in the REAL WORLD will taking the time to create this programming really positively impact our overall site performance? I understand that while Google, BING, etc are constantly tweaking their algorithms as of now having duplicate content primarily means that this content won't get indexed and there won't be any really 'fatal' penalties for having this content on our site. If we don't find a way to generate unique Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions we could 'no-follow' these links (for tag and category pages) or just not use these within our blogs. I am confused about this. Any insight others have about this and recommendations on what action you would take is greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | RoyMcClean0 -
Duplicate Page Title Elements
Hello Mozzers. My questions is below and I would like to thank everyone in advance for any feedback 😉 I own a dog supplies site (www.k9electronics.com). When I launched the site several years back I hired a guy for SEO and he optimized my home page for specific categories search terms such as "dog training collars", "dog shock collars:, ect instead of general search terms such as "dog supplies", "dog accessories", ect. I would like to start moving these home page title element terms (starting with "dog shock collars") over to the dog training collars category but have high rankings for this term on the home page. Current Home Page Title Element:
On-Page Optimization | | k9byron
dog training collars, dog shock collars, electric dog collar, dog supplies (recently added) Current Dog Training Collars Category Title Element:
dog training collars I was hoping to add "dog shock collars" to the dog training collars category page until I achieved higher ranking then delete if from the home page. ..or swap it out with "dog accessories". I am currently ranked #5 in Google for "dog shock collars" on the home page & dog training collars category page ...and I am a little concerned about changing these title elements. My question is; If I add 'dog shock collars" to the dog training collars category page title as well, how will it effect my ranking on both pages having this duplicate term in both page titles? Thank You,
Byron-0 -
Duplicate Content Question
On the home page of my site I have a read more link that takes you to a different URL with basically the same content, just more of it. Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/ Read More Link on Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/deckmaintain.htm I think this may be affecting my seo. Any suggestions on what I should do about this? Should I add a canonical to the home page and/or on the other page? Both pages are indexed by google. Thanks for any help or tips.
On-Page Optimization | | opwdecks0