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
-
Should I be worried about our 'Duplicate' content
Hi guys... I've just been working through some issues to give our site a little cleanup. I'm working through our duplicate content issues (we have some legitimate duplicate pages that need removing, and some of our dynamic content is problematic. Are web developers are going to sort with canonical tags this week.) However... There are some pages that are actually different products, but are very similar pages that are 'triggering' MOZ to say we have duplicate pages. Here an example... http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/fortnight-view-filofax-personal and http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/week-to-a-view-filofax-personal They are very similar refill products, it's just the diary format is different. Question: Should I be worried about this? I've never seen our rankings change in the past when 'cleaning up' duplicate content. What do you guys think? Isaac.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Duplicate content - "Same" profile-information
Hi, I own a casting website with lots of profiles. Some of these profiles only typed in their firstname, email and age, when they registered on the site, and they haven't added more information ever since. From Crawl Diagnostics, I can see that there is "lots" of these profiles, which looks exactly the same (only showing age and firstname), allthought they are not the same. I could add which day the profile were created on the site, to maybe avoid these "duplications". The email will always be hidden. Or, how big an issue is this? Crawl Diagnostics tells me, that there is around 200 of these, and they are "marked" as High Priority. Any ideas on what to do? /Kasper
On-Page Optimization | | KasperGJ0 -
Duplicate content issues - page content and store URLs
Hi, I'm experiencing some heavy duplicate content Crawl errors on Moz with www.redrockdecals.com and therefore I really need some help. It brings up different connections between products and I'm having a hard time figuring out what it means. It is listing the same products as duplicate content but they have different URL endings. For example:http://www.redrockdecals.com/car-graphics/chevrolet-silverado?___store=nl&___from_store=us
On-Page Optimization | | speedbird1229
&
http://www.redrockdecals.com/car-graphics/chevrolet-silverado?___store=d&___from_store=us It seems like Moz considers the copy-pasted parts in the Full Description (scrolled a bit down on product pages) as Duplicate Content. For example the general text found on this page: http://www.redrockdecals.com/caution-tow-limited-turning-radius-decal Or this page: http://www.redrockdecals.com/if-you-don-t-succeed-first-time-then-skydiving-isn-t-for-you-bumper-sticker I am planning to write new and unique descriptions for all products but what do you suggest - should I either remove the long same descriptions or just shorten them perhaps so they don't outweigh the short but unique descriptions above? I've heard search engines understand that some parts of the page can be same on other pages but I wonder if in my case this has gone too deep... Thanks so much!0 -
Duplicate content errors
I have multiple duplicate content errors in my crawl diagnostics. The problem is though that i already took care of these problems with the canonical tag but MOZ keeps saying there is a problem. For example this page http://www.letspump.dk/produkter/56-aminosyre/ has a canonical tag, but moz still says it has an error. Why is that?
On-Page Optimization | | toejklemme0 -
Duplicate Content - Meta Data for International Site Roll Out
Hi All, We have a site targeting Ireland, so all on-page SEO is completed and launched on the Irish site. We are now rolling out this site to the UK...how much of this content & SEO meta data has to be changed for Google to not recognise it as duplicate content? Site structure is as follows: http://www.domain.com/ie-en/ - Irish site http://www.domain.com/uk-en/ - UK site Or will it even be considered duplicate content as we have the uk and Irish signals in the subfolders, will be using geo targeting on webmasters, and will have UK specific addresses and phone numbers? We will be rolling this site out to may more countries so would be great to get this straight from the start so we don't waste time creating many versions of the meta data unnecessarily! Many thanks Emma
On-Page Optimization | | john_Digino0 -
Number of characters to duplicate content
I wonder how much characters in a page title so it can be characterized for Googleas duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | imoveiscamposdojordao
Sorry for the English, I used Google Translator.
I'm from Brazil 😄
Thanks.0 -
Duplicate Content Question
On the home page of my site I have a read more link that takes you to a different URL with basically the same content, just more of it. Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/ Read More Link on Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/deckmaintain.htm I think this may be affecting my seo. Any suggestions on what I should do about this? Should I add a canonical to the home page and/or on the other page? Both pages are indexed by google. Thanks for any help or tips.
On-Page Optimization | | opwdecks0 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5