URL Parameters causing duplicate content - Login/Registration page
-
All,
I just recently acquired a new client and right away I noticed an abundance of duplicate content being recorded after the moz crawl diagnostics was completed.
After a quick digest of the issue, it seems that the majority (90%) of the outlined duplicated content is stemming from the client's Login/Registration page. Upon clicking (without being logged-in) any asset or forum discussion board link within the site, the user is automatically redirected to the Login/Registration page, which seems to create this massive redirect loop associated with dynamic url parameters.
Ex. After clicking on a select internal link (asset or discussion board) the user is redirected to the Login/Register page which presents the page and a URL that looks a lot this this:
Ex. 1 https://www.clientsite.com/register-login?ReturnUr...xxxx%xxxx%xxxx%......
Ex. 2 https://www.clientsite.com**/register-login?returnurl=/register-login?returnurl=/register-login?returnurl=/page-titl**e/
These URLs seem to becoming larger and larger...
The client wants to ensure users have to Login/Register within their site before they're allowed to view the content. This process doesn't allow for any type of preview page to be viewed by a user prior to clicking on the internal link, which in turn doesn't allow any preview pages to be indexed.
Right now, Moz is picking up all of the redirect and labeling them as duplicate page content/duplicate page titles based on the Login/Registration page.
Questions/Comments:
- Would it be wise to create preview pages for the asset pages and discussion board pages to allow for proper indexing?
- Could this be a CMS issue? Current being used on this is, Kentico.
-
There are thousands of pages being recorded in the crawl as duplicate, however only 14 seem to be indexing with duplicate title tags.
-
301 or canonical redirect strategy?
-
Moz crawl data issue?
Again, this is my first look at this issue, so more information is bound to come out soon!
Please let me know if anyone has run into this issue and if you have a possible solution to get rid of this redirect loop process.
Thanks!
-T
-
I missed one question you asked - as Google is unable to index content which is only available for registered users I might be a good idea to create a preview page - showing part of the content even when not logged-in. This only makes sense however if the content remains interesting enough for visitors even if only part of it is accessible. You risk to get a high bounce rate on these pages, as the content really needs to be very unique and valuable for the users in order to go through the complicated process of registration. Personally, I always get frustrated when landing on these kind of pages, and unless it's a site that also seems useful for future visits, I always go back to the search results and try to find other sites which provide the info without registration.
-
Hi,
The best way to find the source of the redirect loops is to perform a crawl with Screaming Frog - the moment you see these endless url's appearing - you stop the crawl - click on the url - right mouse button "Crawl Path Report" => this will lead you all the way back to the url where the error starts.
In your case, it could be sufficient to check the source of registration page and look for relative links containing /register-login - probably it's one small link hidden somewhere which is causing the problem. The crawl would be good to check if other loops exist.
The best way to avoid redirect loops is to use absolute rather than relative url's in your code - which makes it (almost) impossible to get these loops. Normally this should be something you can configure in your CMS.
If it's a login page - I would not put a canonical - it has no value for search engines (and for users who would land on this page), so I would put a noindex on these pages and nofollow on the links that point to this page.
rgds
Dirk
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
-
Duplicate content issue
I'm getting duplicate content warnings from Moz for various slideshows on my posts and pages in Wordpress. It seems when I create a slideshow it exists as its own page and as these have no text Moz sees them as duplicates. Here are some examples - http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/?gallery_page=slideshow&pp_gallery_id=1331991312
Moz Pro | | simonatkinsphoto
Moz says is a duplicate of -
http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/?gallery_page=slideshow&pp_gallery_id=1000144730 The second of those two slideshows is on this page -http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/menorca-wedding/ but also exists as the page above. How can i avoid these being seen as duplicate content?0 -
How do you create tracking URLs in Wordpress without creating duplicate pages?
I use Wordpress as my CMS, but I want to track click activity to my RFQ page from different products and services on my site. The easiest way to do this is through adding a string to the end of a URL (ala http://www.netrepid.com/request-for-quote/?=colocation) The downside to this, of course, is that when Moz does its crawl diagnostic every week, I get notified that I have multiple pages with the same page title and the dup content. I'm not a programming expert, but I'm pretty handy with Wordpress and know a thing or two about 'href-fing' (yeah, that's a thing). Can someone who tracks click activity in WP with URL variables please enlighten me on how to do this without creating dup pages? Appreciate your expertise. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | Netrepid0 -
Magento: Moz finding URL and URL?p=1 as duplicate. Solution?
Good day Mozzers! Moz bot is finding URL's in the Catalogue pages with the format www.example.com/something and www.example.com/something?p=1 as duplicate (since they are the same page) Whats the best solution to implement here? Canonical? Any other? Cheers! MozAddict
Moz Pro | | MozAddict0 -
How can I deal with tag page duplicate issues
The Moz crawler reported some dupliated issues. Many of them have to do with tags.
Moz Pro | | IamKovacs
Each tag has a link, and as some articles are under several tags, these come up as duplicate content. I read Dr Peter's piece on Canonical stuff, but it's not clear to me if any of these are the solution. Perhaps the solution lies somewhere else? Maybe I need to block the robots from these urls (But that seems counter-SEO-productive) Thanks
Kovacs0 -
Moz Crawl Test: WordPress sites with and without /feed and /trackback entires?
I have multiple WP websites and on some of the websites, on my Moz Crawl test, I see an entry for every blog post but also entries for /feed and /trackback for that single blog post. For example, www...com/someArticle www....com/someArticle/feed www...com/someArticle/trackback 1. Can anyone explain why the Crawl test is picking up the /feed and /trackback items? Is it simply because they are 301 redirects to the original post (www...com/someArticle)? 2. What setting(s) in WordPress are making this information appear? Or is it just that the site(s) that have the /feed and /trackback are displaying "normal" behavior for a WP site with a lot of trackbacks and feed entires? 3. Should /fee and /trackback, as well as /author be blocked in robots.txt? Thanks in advance for your advice and input!
Moz Pro | | Titan5520 -
Is www.domain.com/page the same url as www.domain.com/page/ for Google? (extra slash at end of url)
Dear all, in open site explorer there is a difference the url's 'www.domain.com/page' and 'www.domain.com/page/' (extra slash at end). There can be different values in pageauthority etc. in the open site explorer tool, but is this also the case for Google? Thanks for replying, Regards, Ben
Moz Pro | | HMK-NL0 -
How to remove /index.html that causes duplicated content
Hi, How to remove /index.html that causes duplicated content?
Moz Pro | | whitelies
From my website navigation links, it does not shows the /index.html. However, when I run the seomoz crawl errors, it show duplicated content. Can anyone tell me how to do it?0 -
"Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but these pages are noindex
Hello guys, our site is nearly perfect - according to SEOmoz campaign overview. But, it shows me 5200 Errors, more then 2500 Pages with Duplicate Content plus more then 2500 Duplicated Page Titles. All these pages are sites to edit profiles. So I set them "noindex, follow" with meta robots. It works pretty good, these pages aren't indexed in the search engines. But why the SEOmoz tools list them as errors? Is there a good reason for it? Or is this just a little bug with the toolset? The URLs which are listet as duplicated are http://www.rimondo.com/horse-edit/?id=1007 (edit the IDs to see more...) http://www.rimondo.com/movie-edit/?id=10653 (edit the IDs to see more...) The crawling picture is still running, so maybe the errors will be gone away in some time...? Kind regards
Moz Pro | | mdoegel0