Duplicate content and canonicalization confusion
-
Hello,
http://bit.ly/1b48Lmp and http://bit.ly/1BuJkUR pages have same content and their canonical refers to the page itself. Yet, they rank in search engines. Is it because they have been targeted to different geographical locations? If so, still the content is same.
Please help me clear this confusion.
Regards
-
I agree with you. It's all very confusing and little details make a BIG difference. Thanks for sticking with this.
-
Thanks a ton Donna for looking into the issue and helping at this level. I highly appreciate it
Their canonical tags confused me. As you have mentioned, the tags should have been one, I don't know why they are using two different ones. Probably, they have set the different geographic targets in Google Webmaster Tools and with the minor content variation and canonical tags, they want to signal Google to treat both the pages differently. I mean it's a big name in the world of ERP. They can't mess up with the canonical tags.
What do you think?
-
Okay. Let's start over looking at it from a goal perspective. I compared the two pages. Here is the difference between the two in terms of page text, highlighted in yellow - http://63.249.66.211/comparison.html. The differences are in the URL, the phone numbers at the top, a word here and there in the middle, and the 2nd block of text and photo under "Explore Our Solutions".
The first page, which I'll call India, has a canoncial tag pointing to itself. (http://www.sap.com/india/pc/bp/erp.html"/>) .
The second page, which I'll call UK, has a canoncial tag, also pointing to itself. (http://www.sap.com/uk/pc/bp/erp.html"/>).
- If you want both pages to rank and have authority, then you use the canonical tag. You need to use the same canonical tag on both pages. Right now they're different. That will essentially tell Google to treat the two pages as one; to show one or the other in search results, but considate their combined SEO value into one for ranking purposes.
- If you only want one page to rank, then noindex the other.
Does that make more sense?
-
Thanks for the reply Donna but my question is bit different. Could you please take a look at the rel canonical tag of the urls I posted. The content on both the pages is 100% same. The only difference is that they are targeted at different geographic locations. The canonical tags point to the page itself and not any master page.
-
This might help Shailendra - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en. Skim down to (or search for) the part beginning with "This indicates the preferred URL", about half-way down the page.
Bottom line, Google attempts to respect canonical tags but it's no guarantee. Increase your chances by using "absolute paths rather than relative paths with the
rel="canonical"
link element". -
Thanks everyone for the response! But I am still confused. The two links that I have posted in my initial question have exactly the same content on both the pages (targeted at different geographic locations) and their canonical tags do not refer to any master page but to them itself, i.e. canonical tag on page A refers to A and canonical tag on page B refers to B. Please take a look at both the pages: http://bit.ly/1b48Lmp and http://bit.ly/1BuJkUR
Regards
-
Canonical pages still get indexed at Google's discretion.
A related question was asked in March 2013 that I think, explains what you're seeing. I've cut and pasted the relevant part below. Mememax is the author.
"Normally the only thing which will prevent a page from ranking is noindex tag. If you don't want to have it indexed just noindex it, if that page has been laready indexed, put the noindex tag and delete from index using GWT option.
Concerning the canonical tag thing, it will consolidate the seo value in one page but it won't prevent those page to appear in rankings, however you may have two cases:
-
the two or more pages are identical. In that case google may accept the canonicalization and show always the original page.
-
the two or more pages are slightly different, it's the case of paginated pages which are canonicalized using rel next/prev. In that sense the whole value will be consolidated in page 1 but then the page which will be shown in the rankings will be the one which responds to that query, for example if someone is looking for blue glass, google will return the page which shows blue glass listing if that's different from the first one."
-
-
Yes, if they were directly competing against each other, you'd expect one of them to drop out of the rankings. What are they both ranking for?
If they are both showing up in the same search, my guess would be that they are very new and Google hasn't noticed the duplication.
But if you see the ranking in different searches (like Google UK and Google India), then you are probably right, Google does not see them as duplicate since they are being shown to different audiences.
-
Hi,
I am sharing two Matt cutts video on this to clear your confusion.I hope it helps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFf1gwr6HJw
Thanks
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, although page has "noindex"
Hello, I had an issue with some pages being listed as duplicate content in my weekly Moz report. I've since discussed it with my web dev team and we decided to stop the pages from being crawled. The web dev team added this coding to the pages <meta name='robots' content='max-image-preview:large, noindex dofollow' />, but the Moz report is still reporting the pages as duplicate content. Note from the developer "So as far as I can see we've added robots to prevent the issue but maybe there is some subtle change that's needed here. You could check in Google Search Console to see how its seeing this content or you could ask Moz why they are still reporting this and see if we've missed something?" Any help much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
Duplicate Content from long Site Title
Hello! I have a number of "Duplicate Title Errors" as my website has a long Site Title: Planit NZ: New Zealand Tours, Bus Passes & Travel Planning. Am I better off with a short title that is simply my website/business name: Planit NZ My thought was adding some keywords might help with my rankings. Thanks Matt
Technical SEO | | mkyhnn0 -
Woocommerce Duplicate Page Content Issue
Hi, I'm receiving a duplicate content error. It says that this url: https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=41 is a duplicate of this: http://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum I'm using wordpress, woocommerce, and not really sure how to even address this. I tried adding this to .htaccess but it didn't redirect the url: 301 Redirects Redirect 301 https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=41 http://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/ Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | a_toohill0 -
Why are these two URLs showing in Moz as duplicate content?
Here is the first URL - http://www.flagandbanner.com/Products/FBPP0000012376.asp Here is the 2nd URL - http://www.flagandbanner.com/Products/flag-spreader.asp Granted I am new to this issue on this website, but what is Roger seeing that I'm not? A lot of our duplicate pages are just like this example.
Technical SEO | | Flaglady0 -
Duplicate Content - Captcha on Contact Form
I am going to be working on a site where the contact form is being flagged as duplicate content the URL is the same apart from having: /contact/10119 contact/31010 ...at the end of it. The only difference in the content of the page that I can see is the Captcha numbers? Is there a way to overcome this to stop duplicate content? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Duplicate Page Content and Titles
A few weeks ago my error count went up for Duplicate Page Content and Titles. 4 errors in all. A week later the errors were gone... But now they are back. I made changes to the Webconfig over a month ago but nothing since. SEOmoz is telling me the duplicate content is this http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/ and http://www.antiquebanknotes.com Thanks for any advise! This is the relevant web.config. <rewrite><rules><rule name="CanonicalHostNameRule1"><match url="(.*)"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^www.antiquebanknotes.com$" negate="true"></add></conditions>
Technical SEO | | Banknotes
<action type="Redirect" url="<a href=" http:="" www.antiquebanknotes.com="" {r:1"="">http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/{R:1}" />
</action></match></rule>
<rule name="Default Page" enabled="true" stopprocessing="true"><match url="^default.aspx$"><conditions logicalgrouping="MatchAll"><add input="{REQUEST_METHOD}" pattern="GET"></add></conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="/"></action></match></rule></rules></rewrite>0 -
Duplicate content
Greetings! I have inherited a problem that I am not sure how to fix. The website I am working on had a 302 redirect from its original home url (with all the link juice) to a newly designed page (with no real link juice). When the 302 redirect was removed, a duplicate content problem remained, since the new page had already been indexed by google. What is the best way to handle duplicate content? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | shedontdiet0 -
Duplicate content handling.
Hi all, I have a site that has a great deal of duplicate content because my clients list the same content on a few of my competitors sites. You can see an example of the page here: http://tinyurl.com/62wghs5 As you can see the search results are on the right. A majority of these results will also appear on my competitors sites. My homepage does not seem to want to pass link juice to these pages. Is it because of the high level of Dup Content or is it because of the large amount of links on the page? Would it be better to hide the content from the results in a nofollowed iframe to reduce duplicate contents visibilty while at the same time increasing unique content with articles, guides etc? or can the two exist together on a page and still allow link juice to be passed to the site. My PR is 3 but I can't seem to get any of my internal pages(except a couple of pages that appear in my navigation menu) to budge of the PR0 mark even if they are only one click from the homepage.
Technical SEO | | Mulith0