Joomla creating duplicate pages, then the duplicate page's canonical points to itself - help!
-
Using Joomla, every time I create an article a subsequent duplicate page is create, such as:
/latest-news/218-image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface
and
/component/content/article?id=218:image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface
The latter being the duplicate.
This wouldn't be too much of a problem, but the canonical tag on the duplicate is pointing to itself.. creating mayhem in Moz and Webmaster tools. We have hundreds of duplicates across our website and I'm very concerned with the impact this is having on our SEO!
I've tried plugins such as sh404SEF and Styleware extensions, however to no avail.
Can anyone help or know of any plugins to fix the canonicals?
-
Hi! I had the luck to talk with a joomla developer and he gave me a solution that sounds too easy for me.
The duplication is generated by the categories.
Therefore we set up all the menu items like index, follow and categories like no index no follow.
He said it works perfectly for him.
I cant believe it is so easy. I will make a trial and let you know if that solves it. -
I wasn't linking to show you an article on how to fix, I was linking to show you the article setup we use for our blog. We use one menu item per article.
For your fix, I would create a new sitemap for all the root and canonical URLs you want indexed. Then create an htaccess document that redirects the pages to the proper version. This will only allow you to visit one version.
An additional option if you are seeing the URLs show up indexed is to request a URL removal in Google webmaster tools for the duplicate versions, but this is a bit more risky. I would do this only if your blog gets a ton of hits and you don't want to place additional load on the server to process a lot of redirects per day.
Hope this helps!
-
What about when it is not coming from blogs?
For example:http://www.spain-internship.com/fr/faq/termes-et-conditions
http://www.spain-internship.com/fr/faq/termes-et-conditions/161-work-in-london-de
http://www.spain-internship.com/fr/faq/termes-et-conditions/192-home-page-sv
http://www.spain-internship.com/fr/faq/termes-et-conditions/190-home-page-nl
And like this 45 more. It makes a canonical to itself but....this is not the right solution, should point to sef one.
Let me know! By the way, cant find the right article in your page. Direct link?
-
We manually set up our blog pages. It give us the most control over every aspect. Granted it's not the fastest way to do it, but it only takes about an extra 3 minutes per post. You can view how its set up here: http://www.webdesignandcompany.com/seo-tips-for-small-business
-
This may be old but if you had a clue, it would be great to hear. Searching for a fix.
-
Has anyone else had problems with canonical tags and Joomla?
When you create an article, a duplicate page is created with the canonical pointing to itself. Therefore, having two exact pages, both claiming to be the original.
It seems to be a widespread issue but with seemingly little solutions...
Does anyone know of any plugins which may solve this? I've looked but with no luck.
Joe
-
Hi David,
Thanks for your response!
The answer to all your questions is 'Yes'.
SEF urls and url re-writing (apache using .htaccess)
And yes, blog category
Menus -> Main menu -> Latest News -> Menu item type = Category Blog
You can see an example here:
We want the first one to be right and the second to then use the first as the canonical url – i.e. as canonical is supposed to work!
Any ideas? I'm pulling my hair out over this!
-
href="http://www.scientifica.uk.com/latest-news/218-image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface" rel="canonical" />
How are your articles set up in Joomla? Do you enable URL rewriting along with SEF URLs?
Seems like you are using the blog category to quickly add in new articles, is this true?
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
-
404's being re-indexed
Hi All, We are experiencing issues with pages that have been 404'd being indexed. Originally, these were /wp-content/ index pages, that were included in Google's index. Once I realized this, I added in a directive into our htaccess to 404 all of these pages - as there were hundreds. I tried to let Google crawl and remove these pages naturally but after a few months I used the URL removal tool to remove them manually. However, Google seems to be continually re/indexing these pages, even after they have been manually requested for removal in search console. Do you have suggestions? They all respond to 404's. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tom3_151 -
Canonical Tags on Parameter Pages With Hreflang
Hey Everyone: We are currently implementing hreflang tags on our site, and we have many parameter pages with hreflang tags; however, I am afraid these may be counted as duplicate content without canonical tags. example.com/utm_source=tpi href='http://example.com/de" hreflang="de" rel="alternate" href='http://example.com/nl" hreflang="nl" rel="alternate" href='http://example.com/fr" hreflang="fr" rel="alternate" href='http://example.com/it" hreflang="it" rel="alternate" I have two questions 1. Do I need a canonical tag pointing to example.com ? 2. On the homepage without the parameter, should I add self referencing hreflang tags? (href="http://example.com/" hreflang="es" Thanks so much for your help! Kyle
Technical SEO | | TeespringMoz0 -
When creating parent and child pages should key words be repeated in url and page title?
We are in the direct mail advertising business: PrintLabelAndMail.com Example: Parent:
Technical SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach
Postcard Direct Mail Children:
Postcard Mailings
Postcard Design
Postcard Samples
Postcard Pricing
Postcard Advantages should "postcard" be repeated in the URL and Page Title? and in this example should each of the 5 children link back directly to the parent or would it be better to "daisy chain" them using each as parent for the next?0 -
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Please advise.
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Are there any other precautions I should be taking? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
My number of duplicate page title and temporary redirect warnings increased after I enabled Canonical urls. Why? Is this normal?
After receiving my first SEO moz report, I had some duplicate page titles and temporary redirects. I was told enabling Canonical urls would take of this. I enabled the Canonical URLs, but the next report showed that both of those problems had increased three fold after enabled the canonical urls! What happened?
Technical SEO | | btsseo780 -
Page has a 301 redirect, now we want to move it back to it's original place
Hi - This is the first time I've asked a question! My site, www.turnkeylandlords.co.uk is going through a bit of a redesign (for the 2nd time since it launched in July 2012...) First redesign meant we needed to move a page (https://www.turnkeylandlords.co.uk/about-turnkey-mortgages/conveyancing/) from the root to the 'about-us' section. We implemented a 301 redirect and everything went fine. I found out yesterday that the plan is to move this page (and another one as well, but it's the same issue so no point in sharing the URL) back to the root. What do I do? A new 301? Wouldn't this create a loop? Or just delete the original 301? Thanks in advance, Amelia
Technical SEO | | CommT0 -
Adding 'NoIndex Meta' to Prestashop Module & Search pages.
Hi Looking for a fix for the PrestaShop platform Look for the definitive answer on how to best stop the indexing of PrestaShop modules such as "send to a friend", "Best Sellers" and site search pages. We want to be able to add a meta noindex ()to pages ending in: /search?tag=ball&p=15 or /modules/sendtoafriend/sendtoafriend-form.php We already have in the robot text: Disallow: /search.php
Technical SEO | | reallyitsme
Disallow: /modules/ (Google seems to ignore these) But as a further tool we would like to incude the noindex to all these pages too to stop duplicated pages. I assume this needs to be in either the head.tpl or the .php file of each PrestaShop module.? Or is there a general site wide code fix to put in the metadata to apply' Noindex Meta' to certain files. Current meta code here: Please reply with where to add code and what the code should be. Thanks in advance.0 -
Duplicate titles OK if page don't need to rank well?
I know It is not a good idea to have duplicate titles across a website on pages as Google does not like this. Is it ok to have duplicate titles on pages that aren't being optimised with SERP's in mind? or could this have a negative effect on the pages that are being optimised?
Technical SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0