Why am I getting all these duplicate pages?
-
This is going for basically all my pages, but my website has 3 'duplicates' as the rest just have 2 (no index)
Why are these 3 variations counting as duplicate pages?
-
Actually, canonical tags are the absolute last-ditch way of dealing with this issue.
The correct solution is to use 301-redirects to force all version of the URL except the primary to redirect to the primary (also called canonical) URL. Canonical in this instance just means the primary or most authoritative version of something. Nothing to do with the tags of the same name.
The only reason to use the rel=canonical tag for this is if you have absolutely no way to do it through 301-redirects. (For instance your host doesn't allow access to the .htaccess file and your DNS system doesn't allow it either.)
Use Travis's info below for exactly how to do this in .htaccess. There are also many other posts here in Q&A that address this if you want more reference points.
Paul
-
Your next question is; "Great, but how do I fix it?"
It looks like this particular detail was missed during server configuration. You would handle this with rewrites via .htaccess if you're using an Apache server. However, if you're unfamiliar with the file - proceed with caution - if you can't push and pull from a test environment for some reason. A little bit of white space or a syntax error can knock the site down until you find the error.
Otherwise, Ultimate Htaccess has just about everything you need to know. Here are the commands you will need. If you're using WordPress, make sure the redirects go before the section of your file that pertains to WordPress.
-
Technically all of these urls are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google “canonicalizes” a url, pick the url that seems like the best representative from that set.
Check this link: http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
-
Hello W2GITeam and welcome to the world of SEO!
The problem you've described is covered in basic/fundamental SEO concepts. The specific topic to help you turn those 3 pages into a single, non-duplicate, indexed page is through Canonical tags.
Learn more about those tags and how they help suppress duplicate content from being indexed here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
That's plenty to get you started
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
-
Crawl Diagnostics saids a page is linking but I can't find the link on the page.
Hi I have just got my first Crawl Diagnostics report and I have a questions. It saids that this page: http://goo.gl/8py9wj links to http://goo.gl/Uc7qKq which is a 404. I can't recognize the URL on the page which is a 404 and when searching in the code I can't find the %7Blink%7D in the URL which gives the problems. I hope you can help me to understand what triggers it 🙂
Moz Pro | | SebastianThode0 -
Pages with Temporary Redirect (CTA)
I had MOZ crawl my site and I had 5 CTA pages with a temporary redirect. How do I correct the issue? Thank You! -Nick
Moz Pro | | X2Metrology10 -
Tracking keyword rankings on sub pages
Hello, What is the best way to track keywords on sub pages of a website through seomoz? Do we need to create a separate campaign for each sub page? Thanks for all the help!
Moz Pro | | DerekDenholm0 -
Duplicate Title
Hi, I am getting a "duplicate title" error for all the sites I make and I am not sure why - it's only for my homepage. www.carolynnescottages.com.au is one for example. It picks up the url www.carolynnescottages.com.au and also www.carolynnescottages.com.au/index The index page is the homepage. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also is there some tutorials where I can learn how to use each of the tools in seomoz properly? videos? Thanks again. Tammy
Moz Pro | | tammyc0 -
Issue getting total links, page & domain authority
Hi guys, I am trying to get total links, page & domain authority using the API. I am requesting the following columns: Cols=6871947673632768328204816384343597383681653687091214 { "fjid": 207343179, "ued": 43324279, "pib": 255645, "ptrr": 0.0056131743357352125, "fmrp": 8.246626591590841, "unid": 954915, "fjf": 4003651, "fjr": 0.00040067116628622016, "ftrp": 8.308303969566644, "ftrr": 0.0012189619975325583, "fejp": 9.265328830369816, "pnid": 45883246, "fjd": 2480265, "ujfq": 1277385, "pjip": 1230240, "fjp": 9.586342983782004, "fuid": 294877628, "uu": "www.google.com/", "pejr": 0.0004768398971363439, "ufq": "www.google.com/", "pejp": 9.647424778525615, "ujp": 300689, "utrp": 7.916901429865898, "ptrp": 9.487254666203722, "utrr": 0.001639219985667878, "fmrr": 0.000731592927123369, "pda": 100, "pjd": 5600882, "ulc": 1342758719, "fnid": 12165784, "fejr": 0.00016052965883996156, "ujb": 107264 } I cannot see the UPA column returned in the JSON object. Im using 34359738368 for the UPA column. I need to retrieve the three fields (page authority, domain authority and total links) in the same query. Is it possible?
Moz Pro | | Srvwiz0 -
Drop in Number of Crawled pages by SEOMOZ?
I noticed that the number of Crawled Pages on my website has been 2 pages only over past week. Before that the number of crawled pages was over 1000. My site has numerous pages as it is a Travel website that pulls search results for Flights, Cars, Hotels, Cruises and Vacation packages so there is a huge Database there. Can someone help? Thanks !
Moz Pro | | sherohass0 -
Roger keeps telling me my canonical pages are duplicates
I've got a site that's brand spanking new that I'm trying to get the error count down to zero on, and I'm basically there except for this odd problem. Roger got into the site like a naughty puppy a bit too early, before I'd put the canonical tags in, so there were a couple thousand 'duplicate content' errors. I put canonicals in (programmatically, so they appear on every page) and waited a week and sure enough 99% of them went away. However, there's about 50 that are still lingering, and I'm not sure why they're being detected as such. It's an ecommerce site, and the duplicates are being detected on the product page, but why these 50? (there's hundreds of other products that aren't being detected). The URLs that are 'duplicates' look like this according to the crawl report: http://www.site.com/Product-1.aspx http://www.site.com/product-1.aspx And so on. Canonicals are in place, and have been for weeks, and as I said there's hundreds of other pages just like this not having this problem, so I'm finding it odd that these ones won't go away. All I can think of is that Roger is somehow caching stuff from previous crawls? According to the crawl report these duplicates were discovered '1 day ago' but that simply doesn't make sense. It's not a matter of messing up one or two pages on my part either; we made this site to be dynamically generated, and all of the SEO stuff (canonical, etc.) is applied to every single page regardless of what's on it. If anyone can give some insight I'd appreciate it!
Moz Pro | | icecarats0 -
Too many links on a page - pull-down menus
SEOMoz is showing too many links on the page (www.ankinlaw.com). There clearly aren't 100 visible links on the page. Is it counting each page found on the (extensive) pull-down menu as a link? If not, where do all the links come from?
Moz Pro | | rarbel0