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
-
How to fix duplicate content for homepage and index.html
Hello, I know this probably gets asked quite a lot but I haven't found a recent post about this in 2018 on Moz Q&A, so I thought I would check in and see what the best route/solution for this issue might be. I'm always really worried about making any (potentially bad/wrong) changes to the site, as it's my livelihood, so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Moz, SEMRush and several other SEO tools are all reporting that I have duplicate content for my homepage and index.html (same identical page). According to Moz, my homepage (without index.html) has PA 29 and index.html has PA 15. They are both showing Status 200. I read that you can either do a 301 redirect or add rel=canonical I currently have a 301 setup for my http to https page and don't have any rel=canonical added to the site/page. What is the best and safest way to get rid of duplicate content and merge the my non index and index.html homepages together these days? I read that both 301 and canonical pass on link juice but I don't know what the best route for me is given what I said above. Thank you for reading, any input is greatly appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | dreservices0 -
Photo Gallery with Duplicate Content and Titles
I have a photo Gallery that is coming up as a lot of Duplicate Titles and Page Content and fixing each photo just isn't possible right now. Should I just block the search engines from indexing them to resolve the errors?
On-Page Optimization | | NeilBelliveau0 -
Duplicate Content
Is making tabs with general product information on similar products considered duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | BridalHotspot0 -
Duplicated Content with joomla multi language website
Dear Seomoz Community I am running a multi language joomla website (www.siam2nite.com) with 2 active languages. The first and primary language is english. the second language is thai. Most of the content (articles, event descriptions ...) is in english only. What we did is a thai translation for the navigation bars, headers, titles etc (translation of all joomla language files) those texts are static and only help the user navigate / understand our site in their thai language. Now I facing a problem with duplicated content. Lets take our Q&A component as example. the url structure looks like this: english - www.siam2nite.com/en/questions/ thai - www.siam2nite.com/th/questions/ Every question asked will create two URL, one for each language. The content itself (user questions & answers) is identical on both URL's. Only the GUI language is different. If you take a look at this question you will understand what i mean: ENGLISH VERSION: http://www.siam2nite.com/en/questions/where-to-celebrate-halloween-in-bangkok THAI VERSION: http://www.siam2nite.com/th/questions/where-to-celebrate-halloween-in-bangkok As you can see each page has a unique title (H1) and introduction text in the correct language (same for menu, buttons, etc.) but the questions and answers are only available in one language. Now my question 😉 I guess Google will see this pages as duplicated content. How should I proceed with this problem: put all thai links /th/questions/ in the robots.txt and block them or make a canonical tag for the english versions? Not sure if I set a canonical tag google will still index the thai title and introduction texts (they have important thai keywords in them) Would really appreciate your help on this 😉 Regards, Menelik
On-Page Optimization | | menelik0 -
Moving Top rank Page urls off my Home page and nesting them on one page? Good idea?
I am basically trying to cut down the amount of links on my home page to make it less eye boggling and move stuff around. So i have of my Urls on my home page that lead to pages that rank very well within google. My questions is can i remove those urls to a separate page to group them together and then showcase that one link to that page on my home page. Is that a good idea or i am going to loose my link juice and position in search? The physical urls on those pages wont change at all.
On-Page Optimization | | Dante130 -
How dangerous are duplicate page titles
We ran a SEO crawl and on our report it flag up duplicate pages titles, we investigate further and found that these were page titles from the same product line that had more than one page, e.g 1-50 (products) 51-100 (products) with a next button to move to the following 50 products. These where flagged as duplicate page titles ".../range-1/page-1" and ".../range-1/page-2" These titles are obviously being read as duplicates but because they are the same range we do not know what the best course of action is. We want to know how detrimental these page titles will be to our SEO if at all. If anyone could shed some light on this issue it would be a massive help. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | SimonDixon0 -
Article on site and distribution, is it duplicate content?
I was always taught to place all original articles on site, let them get indexed by Google, then put out for distribution through various press release outlets. With the latest penguin update, how does this practice work out concerning duplicate content? In theory, I wrote the article so I should get credit for it on my site first, then push through various distribution outlets to get it out to my targeted audience in my niche field. Typing out loud I would tend to think if the article is on my site first then I would get credit and any others following would be hit by duplicate content if in fact google considered it a dupe violation. Any input on this? Am I on track or am I heading for a train wreck.
On-Page Optimization | | anthonytjm0 -
Duplicate content - what to do?
Hi, We have a whole lot of articles on our site. In total 5232 actually. The web crawler tells me that in the articles we have a lot of duplicate content. Which is sort of nonsense, since each article is unique. Ah, some might have some common paragraphs because they are recurring news about a weekly competition. But, an example: http://www.betxpert.com/artikler/bookmakere/brandvarme-ailton-snupper-topscorerprisen AND http://www.betxpert.com/artikler/bookmakere/opdaterede-odds-pa-sportschef-situationen-pa-vestegnen These are "duplicate content", however the two article texts are not the same. The menu, and the widgets are all the same, but highly relevant to the article. So what should I do? How can i rid myself of these errors? -Rasmus
On-Page Optimization | | rasmusbang0