Duplicate Page content | What to do?
-
Hello Guys,
I have some duplicate pages detected by MOZ. Most of the URL´s are from a registracion process for users, so the URL´s are all like this:
www.exemple.com/user/login?destination=node/125%23comment-form
What should I do? Add this to robot txt? If so how? Whats the command to add in Google Webmaster?
Thanks in advance!
Pedro Pereira
-
Hi Carly,
It needs to be done to each of the pages. In most cases, this is just a minor change to a single page template. Someone might tell you that you can add an entry to robots.txt to solve the problem, but that won't remove them from the index.
Looking at the links you provided, I'm not convinced you should deindex them all - as these are member profile pages which might have some value in terms of driving organic traffic and having unique content on them. That said I'm not party to how your site works, so this is just an observation.
Hope that helps,
George
-
Hi George,
I am having a similar issue with my site, and was looking for a quick clarification.
We have several "member" pages that have been created as a part of registration (thousands) and they are appearing as duplicate content. When you say add noindex and and a canonical, is this something that needs to be done to every individual page or is there something that can be done that would apply to the thousands of pages at once?
Here are a couple of examples of what the pages look like:
http://loyalty360.org/me/members/8003
http://loyalty360.org/me/members/4641
Thank you!
-
1. If you add just noindex, Google will crawl the page, drop it from the index but it will also crawl the links on that page and potentially index them too. It basically passes equity to links on the page.
2. If you add nofollow, noindex, Google will crawl the page, drop it from the index but it will not crawl the links on that page. So no equity will be passed to them. As already established, Google may still put these links in the index, but it will display the standard "blocked" message for the page description.
If the links are internal, there's no harm in them being followed unless you're opening up the crawl to expose tons of duplicate content that isn't canonicalised.
noindex is often used with nofollow, but sometimes this is simply due to a misunderstanding of what impact they each have.
George
-
Hello,
Thanks for your response. I have learn more which is great
My question is should I add a noindex only to that page or a noidex, nofolow?
Thanks!
-
Yes it's the worst possible scenario that they basically get trapped in SERPs. Google won't then crawl them until you allow the crawling, then set noindex (to remove from SERPS) and then add nofollow,noindex back on to keep them out of SERPs and to stop Google following any links on them.
Configuring URL parameters again is just a directive regarding the crawl and doesn't affect indexing status to the best of my knowledge.
In my experience, noindex is bulletproof but nofollow / robots.txt is very often misunderstood and can lead to a lot of problems as a result. Some SEOs think they can be clever in crafting the flow of PageRank through a site. The unsurprising reality is that Google just does what it wants.
George
-
Hi George,
Thanks for this, It's very interesting... the urls do appear in search results but their descriptions are blocked(!)
Did you try configuring URL parameters in WMT as a solution?
-
Hi Rafal,
The key part of that statement is "we might still find and index information about disallowed URLs...". If you read the next sentence it says: "As a result, the URL address and, potentially, other publicly available information such as anchor text in links to the site can still appear in Google search results".
If you look at moz.com/robots.txt you'll see an entry for:
Disallow: /pages/search_results*
But if you search this on Google:
site:moz.com/pages/search_results
You'll find there are 20 results in the index.
I used to agree with you, until I found out the hard way that if Google finds a link, regardless of whether it's in robots.txt or not it can put it in the index and it will remain there until you remove the nofollow restriction and noindex it, or remove it from the index using webmaster tools.
George
-
George,
I went to check with Google to make sure I am correct and I am!
"While Google won't crawl or index the content blocked by
robots.txt
, we might still find and index information about disallowed URLs from other places on the web." Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=enYes, he can fix these problems on page but disallowing it in robots will work fine too!
-
Just adding this to robots.txt will not stop the pages being indexed:
Disallow: /*login?
It just means Google won't crawl the links on that page.
I would do one of the following:
1. Add noindex to the page. PR will still be passed to the page but they will no longer appear in SERPs.
2. Add a canonical on the page to: "www.exemple.com/user/login"
You're never going to try and get these pages to rank, so although it's worth fixing I wouldn't lose too much sleep on the impact of having duplicate content on registration pages (unless there are hundreds of them!).
Regards,
George
-
In GWT: Crawl=> URL Parameters => Configure URL Parameters => Add Parameter
Make sure you know what you are doing as it's easy to mess up and have BIG issues.
-
Add this line to your robots.txt to prevent google from indexing these pages:
Disallow: /*login?
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
-
Hi - How do you get rid of duplicate content that was accidentally created on a tag url? For example, when I published a new article, the content was duplicated on: /posts/tag/lead-generation/
the original article was created with: /posts/shippers-looking-for-freight-brokers/ How can I fix this so a new URL is not created every time I add a tag to a new posting?
On-Page Optimization | | treetopgrowthstrategy0 -
Magento - How to avoid duplicate content on products that span different sites.
We have 4 Magento store fronts that operate out of the same backend. Is there any way to safely have products that span multiple stores without getting a duplicate content penalty? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Shop-Sq0 -
Duplicate Content - But it isn't!
Hi All, I have a site that releases alerts for particular problem/events/happenings. Due to legal stuff we keep the majority of the content the same on each of these event pages. The URLs are all different but it keeps coming back as duplicate content. The canonical tag is not right (i dont think for this) egs http://www.holidaytravelwatch.com/alerts/call-to-arms/egypt/coral-sea-waterworld-resort-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt-holiday-complaints-july-2014 http://www.holidaytravelwatch.com/alerts/call-to-arms/egypt/hotel-concorde-el-salam-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt-holiday-complaints-may-2014
On-Page Optimization | | Astute-Media0 -
Duplicate pages
Hi I have recently signed up to Moz Pro and the first crawl report on my wordpress site has brought up some duplicate content issues. I don't know what to do with this data! The original page : http://www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk/blog/ and the duplicate content page : http://www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk/author/david/ If anyone can point me to a resource or explain what I need to do thanks! David.
On-Page Optimization | | WallerD0 -
Duplicate Content
Is making tabs with general product information on similar products considered duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | BridalHotspot0 -
Locating Duplicate Pages
Hi, Our website consists of approximately 15,000 pages however according to our Google Webmaster Tools account Google has around 26,000 pages for us in their index. I have run through half a dozen sitemap generators and they all only discover the 15,000 pages that we know about. I have also thoroughly gone through the site to attempt to find any sections where we might be inadvertently generating duplicate pages without success. It has been over six months since we did any structural changes (at which point we did 301's to the new locations) and so I'd like to think that the majority of these old pages have been removed from the Google Index. Additionally, the number of pages in the index doesn't appear to be going down by any discernable factor week on week. I'm certain it's nothing to worry about however for my own peace of mind I'd like to just confirm that the additional 11,000 pages are just old results that will eventually disappear from the index and that we're not generating any duplicate content. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a way to download a list of the 26,000 pages that Google has indexed so that I can compare it against our sitemap. Obviously I know about site:domain.com however this only returned the first 1,000 results which all checkout fine. I was wondering if anybody knew of any methods or tools that we could use to attempt to identify these 11,000 extra pages in the Google index so we can confirm that they're just old pages which haven’t fallen out of the index yet and that they’re not going to be causing us a problem? Thanks guys!
On-Page Optimization | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Can you have more than 1 site on the first page if site look and content is completely different but keywords are the sam.
I have a client that wants to build another completely different site than his main site and optimize it to have 2 websites on the first page for his keywords. The content and look and feel of the website would be completely different. One of his competitors is doing it and getting away with it. What is your advice.
On-Page Optimization | | Roots70 -
Can duplicate content issues be solved with a noindex robot metatag?
Hi all I have a number of duplicate content issues arising from a recent crawl diagnostics report. Would using a robots meta tag (like below) on the pages I don't necessarily mind not being indexed be an effective way to solve the problem? Thanks for any / all replies
On-Page Optimization | | joeprice0