Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Removing duplicate content
-
Due to URL changes and parameters on our ecommerce sites, we have a massive amount of duplicate pages indexed by google, sometimes up to 5 duplicate pages with different URLs.
1. We've instituted canonical tags site wide.
2. We are using the parameters function in Webmaster Tools.
3. We are using 301 redirects on all of the obsolete URLs
4. I have had many of the pages fetched so that Google can see and index the 301s and canonicals.
5. I created HTML sitemaps with the duplicate URLs, and had Google fetch and index the sitemap so that the dupes would get crawled and deindexed.
None of these seems to be terribly effective. Google is indexing pages with parameters in spite of the parameter (clicksource) being called out in GWT. Pages with obsolete URLs are indexed in spite of them having 301 redirects. Google also appears to be ignoring many of our canonical tags as well, despite the pages being identical.
Any ideas on how to clean up the mess?
-
Where this is appearing the most is on cross domain canonicals. We have duplicate content across 2 websites, and we've canonicaled some pages from Site A to Site B, and some from Site B to Site A. In theory, pages that were canonicaled to the other domain should be deindexed. When I run a rankings report, I see pages for the wrong domain ranking, a month later. They are pages with parameters, or old URLs that we've changed. It's like a game of whack a mole. Every time we get a page deindexed, a duplicate with a different parameter takes its place. And this is in spite of calling out these parameters in GWT.
What I imagine is happening is that we have several URLs for the same page indexed. When Google crawls our site, it is correctly canonicaling the page it crawls. In the rankings, however, Google is probably pulling a duplicate page out of its index, and ranking it without crawling it. If it was crawling it, Google would see the canonical tag, and not rank it. So we have an ongoing battle to get Google to crawl the page it just pulled out of its index to see the the canonical tag.
The reason for all this is that when a page cross domain canonicals correctly, the rankings for the duplicate page on the other site goes up dramatically. As long as Google keeps ranking the wrong pages, we don't get the rankings bump on the other site.
-
Are you basing this on a site: search? It's fairly common for URLs to appear in a site: search that otherwise will not appear for any actual searches. Are the undesirable versions of the URLs getting any search traffic?
-
Yes, as Patrick said, surprisingly often something like this is a result of a simple oversight because we have been looking at the same code over and over...
Do you have access to Screaming Frog? You could crawl your site and see whether redirects/canonicals are behaving as you expected.
Have you taken a look at the html of one of the incorrectly indexed pages when it is loaded in your browser? Can you see the canonical? If you try going to a redirected page, does it redirect? [I know--way to obvious, but sometimes it is good to start at the beginning again when we can't root out an issue.]
Another culprit in these cases can be internal links. Do you link internally using any of the undesirable URLs? That can send a message to Google that those URLs are still in play. Again, you can use Screaming Frog to find those strings.
-
It sounds like part of the problem may be the sitemaps you're sending. By including duplicates in a sitemap, you're basically telling Google that each version of the page is valid. I would remove them and resubmit a sitemap with only the canonical versions you want indexed and see if that helps.
-
Hi there
Are you sure you are using all of the tools above properly? Not saying you're not but people make mistakes and it's just something to look into.
When did you implement all of the changes? Was it recently or was it a long time ago?
How is your organic traffic and rankings? Did you check if you have a manual action at all?
Let me know - 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
-
Trailing Slashes for Magento CMS pages - 2 URLS - Duplicate content
Hello, Can anyone help me find a solution to Fixing and Creating Magento CMS pages to only use one URL and not two URLS? www.domain.com/testpage www.domain.com/testpage/ I found a previous article that applies to my issue, which is using htaccess to redirect request for pages in magento 301 redirect to slash URL from the non-slash URL. I dont understand the syntax fully in htaccess , but I used this code below. This code below fixed the CMS page redirection but caused issues on other pages, like all my categories and products with this error: "This webpage has a redirect loop ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS" Assuming you're running at domain root. Change to working directory if needed. RewriteBase / # www check If you're running in a subdirectory, then you'll need to add that in to the redirected url (http://www.mydomain.com/subdirectory/$1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iamgreenminded
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Trailing slash check Don't fix direct file links RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ $1/ [L,R=301] Finally, forward everything to your front-controller (index.php) RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* index.php [QSA,L]0 -
[E-commerce] Duplicate content due to color variations (canonical/indexing)
Hello, We currently have a lot of color variations on multiple products with almost the same content. Even with our canonicals being set, Moz's crawling tool seems to flag them as duplicate content. What we have done so far: Choosing the best-selling color variation (our "master product") Adding a rel="canonical" to every variation (with our "master product" as the canonical URL) In my opinion, it should be enough to address this issue. However, being given the fact that it's flagged as duplicate by Moz, I was wondering if there is something else we should do? Should we add a "noindex,follow" to our child products and "index,follow" to our master product? (sounds to me like such a heavy change) Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EasyLounge0 -
Best practice for duplicate website content: same root domain name but different extension
Hi there I have a new client who has two websites: http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.co.nz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | turnbullholdingsltd
http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.org.nz They are the same in every regard apart from the domain extension (.co.nz & .org.nz) which is likely to be causing them issues with Google ranking given the huge amount of duplicate content. What is the best practice approach to fixing this? Normally, if I was starting from scratch, I would set one of the extensions as an alias which redirects to the main domain. Thanks in advance. Laurie0 -
Duplicate content on subdomains.
Hi Mozer's, I have a site www.xyz.com and also geo targeted sub domains www.uk.xyz.com, www.india.xyz.com and so on. All the sub domains have the content which is same as the content on the main domain that is www.xyz.com. So, I want to know how can i avoid content duplication. Many Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiteshBharucha0 -
How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio0 -
News sites & Duplicate content
Hi SEOMoz I would like to know, in your opinion and according to 'industry' best practice, how do you get around duplicate content on a news site if all news sites buy their "news" from a central place in the world? Let me give you some more insight to what I am talking about. My client has a website that is purely focuses on news. Local news in one of the African Countries to be specific. Now, what we noticed the past few months is that the site is not ranking to it's full potential. We investigated, checked our keyword research, our site structure, interlinking, site speed, code to html ratio you name it we checked it. What we did pic up when looking at duplicate content is that the site is flagged by Google as duplicated, BUT so is most of the news sites because they all get their content from the same place. News get sold by big companies in the US (no I'm not from the US so cant say specifically where it is from) and they usually have disclaimers with these content pieces that you can't change the headline and story significantly, so we do have quite a few journalists that rewrites the news stories, they try and keep it as close to the original as possible but they still change it to fit our targeted audience - where my second point comes in. Even though the content has been duplicated, our site is more relevant to what our users are searching for than the bigger news related websites in the world because we do hyper local everything. news, jobs, property etc. All we need to do is get off this duplicate content issue, in general we rewrite the content completely to be unique if a site has duplication problems, but on a media site, im a little bit lost. Because I haven't had something like this before. Would like to hear some thoughts on this. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 360eight-SEO
Chris Captivate0 -
Could you use a robots.txt file to disalow a duplicate content page from being crawled?
A website has duplicate content pages to make it easier for users to find the information from a couple spots in the site navigation. Site owner would like to keep it this way without hurting SEO. I've thought of using the robots.txt file to disallow search engines from crawling one of the pages. Would you think this is a workable/acceptable solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gregelwell0 -
Concerns about duplicate content issues with australian and us version of website
My company has an ecommerce website that's been online for about 5 years. The url is www.betterbraces.com. We're getting ready to launch an australian version of the website and the url will be www.betterbraces.com.au. The australian website will have the same look as the US website and will contain about 200 of the same products that are featured on the US website. The only major difference between the two websites is the price that is charged for the products. The australian website will be hosted on the same server as the US website. To ensure Australians don't purchase from the US site we are going to have a geo redirect in place that sends anyone with a AU ip address to the australian website. I am concerned that the australian website is going to have duplicate content issues. However, I'm not sure if the fact that the domains are so similar coupled with the redirect will help the search engines understand that these sites are related. I would appreciate any recommendations on how to handle this situation to ensure oue rankings in the search engines aren't penalized. Thanks in advance for your help. Alison French
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djo-2836690