Drupal SEO help - Duplicate content but very similar URLS?
-
Hi,
This is a very strange problem and not sure how it has happened. I am adding packages to my website and a duplicate page & almost identical URL is being picked up by Google.
E.g. the page I make is http://www.ukgirlthing.co.uk/hen-party/bristol-spa-rty-lunch-pampering-h... but then also appearing is http://www.ukgirlthing.co.uk/hen-party/bristol-spa-rty-pampering-hen-party. The node's are exactly the same, and if i edit one of them, the other also updates. You will notice that the URL's are almost exactly the same, except the words are re-organised slightly?
Shall i just delete the URL alias of the duplicate entry or is there something else which is making this happen?
These URL's are being picked up as duplicate content, although it's the same node!
Hope you can help,
Thank you!
-
Thanks for your help in this Yiannis.
We are now sifting through a lot of the duplicate alias's, creating redirects, and then going into delete them. Also altered the option going forward. I have decided to go with 'Do nothing' as i don't want it to make any URL alterations - That should be OK shouldnt it?
I guess this is case closed - Really appreciate your time and help in this mate!
Sunny
-
HI mate, sorry for the late response.
It should and I agree with you but Open Source was never perfect Drupal is more time consuming and complicated than Wordpress and there is a reason it refers to more "Geeky" people if I may say than the average WP user.
However the end sites are 20.000 times cleaner than any wordpress site and definitely worth the effort and time put into it!
-
No problem at all, I appreciate your help!
Got a question about this module - Why does it ask what to do with an alias, shouldn't it just keep the alias once i make a page, and even if i make changes to it, it stays the same? I don't understand the 'create a new...' etc.. and why it would do that.
When it creates the new alias, they both still point to the same node, so confused why it would make a new alias, rather than leaving the old one intact and not creating a new one?
Thanks!
-
Sorry for the late response, got hooked up with work
Try the 3rd option please which you delete old alias once you create a new one. Select the desirable URL as the new one and save.
Let me know if that solves the problem.
ps. If the old url is indexed and ranked you might want to set a 301 redirect just in case
-
No problems at all Yiannis, feel free to ask as much information as possible!
Just looked in the auto-path settings and found this (see image attachment)
I have a feel this maybe on the wrong setting? If so, what would you advise? Should i change to 'Do nothing, leave the old alias intact' and then go through URL Alias's, find the duplicate wrong ones and manually delete them? Then going forward, no more will occur?
Look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Thanks!
-
Again check this with your developers as its been a while but I think it has to do with your setting on Pathauto (I cant log in to be 100% sure of what you've selected there). Did you install Pathauto after you manualy changed the url? or were both generated via pathauto? Also both pages have canonical urls set on those 2 different urls. Is this intended?
Sorry for blasting you with questions but as I cant see your dashbaord I am trying to get a clear picture
-
Hi Yiannis!
Thanks for this!
Modules we have are Pathauto, <label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-canonical-url">Canonical URL and </label>****<label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-canonical-url"><label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-seochecklist">SEO Checklist. Drupal version is 6.</label></label>
<label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-canonical-url"><label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-seochecklist">I have recently requested our developers to install Global Redirect which I have read solves many other SEO issues with Drupal.</label></label>****<label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-canonical-url"><label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-seochecklist"> </label></label>
I checked within the URL aliases and the 2 different aliases are showing, and are reporting the same node - See both image uploads.
Thanks
-
It's been a VERY long time since I did a web site on Drupal but I will give this a go. To start with can you please list me the modules you use on your web site? Most importantly do you use "Pathauto"? If yes I think there might be a conflict with your URL aliases. Let me know. Also is this Drupal 6 or 7?
-
Hi Andy,
If I make an amendment on one page, the other also shows the amendment, and so for this reason, i can't delete it as both will go. I think you maybe onto something, as in this might be caused by a plugin somewhere, so I will check this out - Moz has shown that I have hundreds of these duplicate pages which is worrying, although they don't physically exist (same node for duplicate).
Tricky one this is!
-
So the word "lunch" is being added to the URL, yet the page doesn't exist?
I'll be honest, I don't work on Drupal because it does do weird things from time to time so can't advise on this specific issue.
I would check the settings though and see if there is an SEO plugin (or site setting) that is causing this to write a second page. Also check to make sure this isn't a page that has been deleted and is still able to be crawled. Has that page with the word "lunch" in the URL, ever been created?
If it is easy enough to do, delete the page and re-create it to see if that clears the problem.
-Andy
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
-
Content Issues: Duplicate Content
Hi there
Technical SEO | | Kingagogomarketing
Moz flagged the following content issues, the page has duplicate content and missing canonical tags.
What is the best solution to do? Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/industrial-flooring/ Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring/0 -
Duplicate Content from Wordpress Template
Hi Wondering if anyone can help, my site has flagged up with duplicate content on almost every page, i think this is because the person who set up the site created a lot of template pages which are using the same code but have slightly different features on. How would I go about resolving this? Would I need to recode every template page they have created?
Technical SEO | | Alix_SEO0 -
How to avoid duplicate content
Hi, I have a website which is ranking on page 1: www.oldname.com/landing-page But because of legal reason i had to change the name.
Technical SEO | | mikehenze
So i moved the landing page to a different domain.
And 301'ed this landing page to the new domain (and removed all products). www.newname.com/landing-page All the meta data, titles, products are still the same. www.oldname.com/landing-page is still on the same position
And www.newname.com/landing-page was on page 1 for 1 day and is now on page 4. What did i do wrong and how can I fix this?
Maybe remove www.oldname.com/landing-page from Google with Google Webmaster Central or not allow crawling of this page with .htaccess ?0 -
Duplicate content or Duplicate page issue?
Hey Moz Community! I have a strange case in front of me. I have published a press release on my client's website and it ranked right away in Google. A week after the page completely dropped and it completely disappeared. The page is being indexed in Google, but when I search "title of the PR", the only results I get for that search query are the media and news outlets that have reported the news. No presence of my client's page. I also have to mention that I found two URLs of the same page: one with lower case letters and one with capital letters. Is this a duplicate page or a duplicate content issue coming from the news websites? How can I solve it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Workaholic0 -
Duplicate Content in Wordpress.com
Hi Mozers! I have a client with a blog on wordpress.com. http://newsfromtshirts.wordpress.com/ It just had a ranking drop because of a new Panda Update, and I know it's a Dupe Content problem. There are 3900 duplicate pages, basically because there is no use of noindex or canonical tag, so archives, categories pages are totally indexed by Google. If I could install my usual SEO plugin, that would be a piece of cake, but since Wordpress.com is a closed environment I can't. How can I put a noindex into all category, archive and author peges in wordpress.com? I think this could be done by writing a nice robot.txt, but I am not sure about the syntax I shoud use to achieve that. Thank you very much, DoMiSol Rossini
Technical SEO | | DoMiSoL0 -
Duplicate content, Original source?
Hi there, say i have two websites with identicle content. website a had content on before website b - so will be seen as the original source? If the content was intended for website b, would taking it off a then make the orinal source to google then go to website b? I want website b to get the value of the content but it was put on website a first - would taking it off website a then give website b the full power of the content? Any help of advice much appreciated. Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Duplicate Content and Canonical use
We have a pagination issue, which the developers seem reluctant (or incapable) to fix whereby we have 3 of the same page (slightly differing URLs) coming up in different pages in the archived article index. The indexing convention was very poorly thought up by the developers and has left us with the same article on, for example, page 1, 2 and 3 of the article index, hence the duplications. Is this a clear cut case of using a canonical tag? Quite concerned this is going to have a negative impact on ranking, of course. Cheers Martin
Technical SEO | | Martin_S0 -
About duplicate content
Hi i'm a new guy around here, but i'm having this problem in my website. Using de Seomoz tools i ran a camping to my website, in results i get to many errors for duplicate conten, for example, http://www.mysite/blue/ http://www.mysite/blue/index.html, so my question is, what is the best way to resolve this problem, use a 301 or use the rel canonical tag? Wich url will be consider for main url, Thanks for yor help.
Technical SEO | | NorbertoMM0