Duplicate Content
-
Hello,
I'm managing a site which shows as having duplicate page issues (in the crawl analyser) for 3 pages. Basically the site is offering 3 different options of the same product so depending on which size you select, you are directed to the relevant page. These 3 pages are basically identical apart from a slight difference in copy regarding the size (small, medium, large)
Is this likely to be a big issue regarding SEO, and what would the moz community suggest re this?
Thank you!
-
Thanks Matt and Erica. I think we'll have to take the band aid approach at first, but it's definitely something I'll now think about with future updates and developments
-
Really good point. The best thing you could do would be simply to not have a unique page for each size of the same product.
-
It's most likely to hurt you from a perspective of low-quality content, which a lot of retail sites get dinged with. In an ideal world, having size as option to choose and only one product page is best with information about all sizes on that page. However, Matt's canonical suggestion also works as a bandaid.
-
It's not likely to be a huge issue, in my opinion. The problem with this sort of duplicate content is simply that the search engines won't necessarily know which page to serve in response to a user's query, so people searching for you could end up being served the wrong result (or no result from you). It ties into my all-time favorite piece of SEO advice: Don't make Google think.
Personally, I'd add a canonical link to each of those pages pointing to the one you'd prefer folks to see in the search results.
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 do I fix duplicate title issues?
I have a sub domain that isn't even on our own site but it's resulting in a lot of errors in Moz for duplicate content, as shown here: http://cl.ly/1R081v0K0e2N. Would this affect our ranking or is it simply just errors within Moz? What measures could I take to make sure that Moz or Google doesn't associate our site with these errors? Would I have to noindex in the htaccess file for the sub domain?
Moz Pro | | MMAffiliate0 -
Duplicate Content & Rel Canonical Tag not working
I'm really questioning the legitimacy of the duplicate content flags with moz. I'm building a website that sells home decor products and a lot of the pages are similar in structure (As would be expected with a store that sells thousands of individual products). It seems a little overkill to me to flag the following pages as duplicate content. They have different urls, titles, h1, h2, and h3 tages, different meta tags, etc. Right now, it's saying that the following have duplicate page content: http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com
Moz Pro | | cp_web
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/pillows/christmas-vacation-embroidered-pillow
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/throws/camo-bear-throw
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/teapots/wonderland-teapot
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/cambridge-rug-36x60
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king%2C-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/redmon-rag-rug-36x60
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/valances/hearthside-valance-72x14
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/valances/hearthside-valance-72x14
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king,-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/teapots/wonderland-teapot
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/throws/camo-bear-throw
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/accessories/home-place-tumbler
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king,-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/cambridge-rug-36x60
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/pillows/christmas-vacation-embroidered-pillow
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king%2C-woodland?pi=18
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king%2C-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/accessories/home-place-tumbler
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/redmon-rag-rug-36x6 Any ideas? Also, it seems like it's not honoring the rel-canonical tag. It keeps saying that pages with a rel canonical tag are duplicates when some of the urls that it's flagging shouldn't even be indexed because of the canonical tag. The "pi" in the query string should not be indexed! http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=3
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=6
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=7
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=6
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=10
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=8
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=8
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=7
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=7
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=1
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=8
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=5
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=10
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=3
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=5
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=4
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=9
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-%26-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=1
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=6
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=1
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=5
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=2
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=9
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=4
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=3
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-%26-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-%26-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=9
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=10
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=2
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=2
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=40 -
Duplicated content generated by keywords
Hello! I am kind of new to SEO and MOZ, so I really need your help to understand why some of my keywords generate duplicated content. Meaning, in my blog posts I use various SEO keywords. It shows up that in my MOZ crawl analysis, I have these keywords listed as duplicates: so two/three different keywords are pointing to the same articles and are considered duplicates? I really don't understand how it is possible. Did it also happen to you? I highly appreciate it. Thank you
Moz Pro | | DianaC0 -
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 -
Duplicate content in crawl despite canonical
Hi! I've had a bunch of duplicate content issues come up in a crawl, but a lot of them seem to have canonical tags implemented correctly. For example: http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Fireplaces http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Nursery http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Turntables http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Turntables?page=0 Aztec http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Turntables?page=1 Any ideas on what's happening here?
Moz Pro | | neooptic0 -
How do I fix a duplicate content error with a top level domain?
Hi, I'm getting a duplicate content error from the SEOmoz crawler due to an issue with trailing slashes. It's showing www.milengo.com and www.milengo.com/ as having duplicate page titles. However I'm pretty sure this has been fixed in the .htaccess file since if you type in the domain with a trailing slash it automatically redirects to the domain without a trailing slash, so this shouldn't be an issue. I'm stuck here. Any ideas? Thanks. Rob
Moz Pro | | milengo0 -
Duplicate page error from SEOmoz
SEOmoz's Crawl Diagnostics is complaining about a duplicate page error. I'm trying to use a rel=canonical but maybe I'm not doing it right. This page is the original, definitive version of the content: https://www.borntosell.com/covered-call-newsletter/sent-2011-10-01 This page is an alias that points to it (each month the alias is changed to point to the then current issue): https://www.borntosell.com/covered-call-newsletter/latest-issue The alias page above contains this tag (which is also updated each month when a new issue comes out) in the section: Is that not correct? Is the https (vs http) messing something up? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | scanlin0 -
Tool for scanning the content of the canonical tag
Hey All, question for you. What is your favorite tool/method for scanning a website for specific tags? Specifically (as my situation dictates now) for canonical tags? I am looking for a tool that is flexible, hopefully free, and highly customizable (for instance, you can specify the tag to look for). I like the concept of using google docs with the import xml feature but as you can only use 50 of those commands at a time it is very limiting (http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/how-to-build-agile-seo-tools-using-google-docs/). I do have a campaign set up using the tools which is great! but I need something that returns a response faster and can get data from more than 10,000 links. Our cms unfortunately puts out some odd canonical tags depending on how a page is rendered and I am trying to catch them quickly before it gets indexed and causes problems. Eventually I would also like to be able to scan for other specific tags, hence the customizable concern. If we have to write a vb script to get it into excel I suppose we can do that. Cheers, Josh
Moz Pro | | prima-2535090