Pagination & duplicate meta
-
Hi
I have a few pages flagged for duplicate meta e.g.:
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenchesI can;t see anything wrong with the pagination & other pages have the same code, but aren't flagged for duplicate:
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=2
I can't see to find the issue - any ideas?
Becky
-
Regarding the links which point to pages, but include the hash. If Google is only seeing this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches
Will it be seeing these as pages which have duplicate content?
-
No problem thank you
-
I could write out how to implements rel next prev but it would be better to look at these articles
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
https://moz.com/ugc/seo-guide-to-google-webmaster-recommendations-for-pagination
-
Hi,
Yes there is javascript to sort the results on those pages.
Is the solution to have these URLs page=2 etc, correctly linked from the page number?
Then ensure rel/prev are used correctly?
I'm also concerned about the content we have at the bottom of the products being shown as duplicate.
-
Hi
Thank you for this. One thing I am confused about is, if Google doesn't crawl those paginated pages, why will it pick up the meta as duplicate?
Thank you for highlighting the links - I hadn't noticed this before.
Where should the rel next prev be coded?
Thanks for your feedback
-
I get how hashes work.
Crawlers do see the page=2, page=3, etc. URLs because the right/left navigation buttons to the side of the numbers link to them. I just proved this by crawling the site in Screaming Frog and doing a search for page=, they're all found.
Becky, there's something larger at play here, potentially with your CMS configuration. It looks like the navigation for paginated sections is messed up. Mouse-over the links and look at the URL in the lower left of your browser, and then click the link and look at your URL bar. The results are very different from what you see on mouse-over. I'd recommend your first step is to talk to your developers and see if they can fix this issue. As VivaCa mentioned, you could be getting false alarms on duplicates here from Moz, so you might be clear with the canonical and prev/next fix - Screaming Frog finds all of those tags properly.
-
I think you guys are missing the point. Anything after the hashtag is ignored. As far as the crawler is concerned, all the links to page 2,3,4,5 are all the same URL - that is why the crawler does not see the other pages.
There is no issue with canonical or how it interacts with the rel next prev. My point on the canonical was simply for illustrative purposes and looks to be implemented correctly.
Separate from the canonical the rel next prevs are setup incorrectly and that needs to be fixed once the issue with how the paginated pages are linked to using the URL with the hashtag parameters.
-
We have the exact same issue, and I found this reply from Dr. Pete helpful regarding this (assuming that what he says is still true): https://moz.com/community/q/pagination-issues-on-e-commerce-site-duplicate-page-title-and-content-on-moz-crawl
His reply:
Unfortunately, Moz Analytics/PRO don't process rel=prev/next properly at this time, so we may give false alarms on those pages, even if the tags are properly implemented.
It can be tricky, but Google recommends a combination of rel=canonical and rel=prev/next. Use the canonical tag to keep sorts from getting indexed, and then use rel=prev/next for the pagination itself. Your 3rd example (page=2...) should rel=prev/next to the URLs before and after it but then canonical to the page=2 variation with no sort parameter. It can get complicated fast, unfortunately, but typically rel=canonical can be implemented in the template. So, once you've got it figured out, it'll work for the entire site.
-
As far as I am aware, there is nothing wrong with using both canonicals and pagination on the same page. Google says this as well here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
We have pagination and canonicals set up as suggested in the Google article and also have some issues with Moz saying we have duplicate content, which the pagination should "fix" as far as I understand it.
From the article:
rel="next"
andrel="prev"
are orthogonal concepts torel="canonical"
. You can include both declarations. For example, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2&sessionid=123 may contain: -
View source on both pages.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000746.htm
Or use the handy Moz bar to view the descriptions
Both your title and meta are exactly the same - aka they are duplicates
view-source:http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches
<title>Workbenches & Work Stations from Key</title>view-source:http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2
<title>Workbenches & Work Stations from Key</title>You can remedy this by simply adding "- Page #" at the end of your title and description, where # is whatever page in the pagination you are at.
The reason why the other pages in your pagination are not showing up with the duplicate issue is that you are hiding them from Google.
When I am on Page 2 and I click on the buttons for page 3,4,5 etc - here are the links that are shown
Page 3 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2#productBeginIndex:60&orderBy:5&pageView:list&
Page 4 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2#productBeginIndex:90&orderBy:5&pageView:list&
Page 5 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2#productBeginIndex:120&orderBy:5&pageView:list&
These are the links that people can click on to navigate at the bottom of the page. Everything behind the hash is ignored by Google. It is a clever way to hide parameters, but when Google looks at this it is just seeing links to the exact same page. Likewise, on that page you have a canonical link to page 2, so even if Google could see the parameters you are giving it a directive that tells Google that Page 2 is the only page that exists.
I can see that you are using rel next prev to designate Page 3 as Page 3 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 etc, but you are not coding the rel next prev properly by putting it up in the header with the meta tags.
In summary
- You have duplicate title and meta tags for all your paginated pages
- You are not linking to your paginated pages properly within the user navigation
- You are incorrectly using rel next prev
-
Hi,
I can't explain why Moz throws a duplicate for one and not the other, that's odd. I did look at the source code for both of the paginated URLs you posted, and it looks like rel=prev/next is mostly right, but a couple suggestions:
- Remove the self-referring canonical tags - On this URL (http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=2) you've got a canonical that points to itself, that's in conflict with the rel=prev/next tags. Rel=prev/next should be used in place of canonical tags, not in conjunction with.
- The one exception to my point about canonicals above: on page=1 of your pagination, canonicalize that to the root. Example, http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=1 should canonicalize to http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets, since those are identical in actual displayed content.
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
-
Possible duplicate content issue
Hi, Here is a rather detailed overview of our problem, any feedback / suggestions is most welcome. We currently have 6 sites targeting the various markets (countries) we operate in all websites are on one wordpress install but are separate sites in a multisite network, content and structure is pretty much the same barring a few regional differences. The UK site has held a pretty strong position in search engines the past few years. Here is where we have the problem. Our strongest page (from an organic point of view) has dropped off the search results completely for Google.co.uk, we've picked this up through a drop in search visibility in SEMRush, and confirmed this by looking at our organic landing page traffic in Google Analytics and Search Analytics in Search Console. Here are a few of the assumptions we've made and things we've checked: Checked for any Crawl or technical issues, nothing serious found Bad backlinks, no new spammy backlinks Geotarggetting, this was fine for the UK site, however the US site a .com (not a cctld) was not set to the US (we suspect this to be the issue, but more below) On-site issues, nothing wrong here - the page was edited recently which coincided with the drop in traffic (more below), but these changes did not impact things such as title, h1, url or body content - we replaced some call to action blocks from a custom one to one that was built into the framework (Div) Manual or algorithmic penalties: Nothing reported by search console HTTPs change: We did transition over to http at the start of june. The sites are not too big (around 6K pages) and all redirects were put in place. Here is what we suspect has happened, the https change triggered google to re-crawl and reindex the whole site (we anticipated this), during this process, an edit was made to the key page, and through some technical fault the page title was changed to match the US version of the page, and because geotargetting was not turned on for the US site, Google filtered out the duplicate content page on the UK site, there by dropping it off the index. What further contributes to this theory is that a search of Google.co.uk returns the US version of the page. With country targeting on (ie only return pages from the UK) that UK version of the page is not returned. Also a site: query from google.co.uk DOES return the Uk version of that page, but with the old US title. All these factors leads me to believe that its a duplicate content filter issue due to incorrect geo-targetting - what does surprise me is that the co.uk site has much more search equity than the US site, so it was odd that it choose to filter out the UK version of the page. What we have done to counter this is as follows: Turned on Geo targeting for US site Ensured that the title of the UK page says UK and not US Edited both pages to trigger a last modified date and so the 2 pages share less similarities Recreated a site map and resubmitted to Google Re-crawled and requested a re-index of the whole site Fixed a few of the smaller issues If our theory is right and our actions do help, I believe its now a waiting game for Google to re-crawl and reindex. Unfortunately, Search Console is still only showing data from a few days ago, so its hard to tell if there has been any changes in the index. I am happy to wait it out, but you can appreciate that some of snr management are very nervous given the impact of loosing this page and are keen to get a second opinion on the matter. Does the Moz Community have any further ideas or insights on how we can speed up the indexing of the site? Kind regards, Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Clickmetrics0 -
Duplicate page url crawl report
Details: Hello. Looking at the duplicate page url report that comes out of Moz, is the best tactic to a) use 301 redirects, and b) should the url that's flagged for duplicate page content be pointed to the referring url? Not sure where the 301 redirect should be applied... should this url, for example: <colgroup><col width="452"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | compassseo
| http://newgreenair.com/website/blog/ | which is listed in the first column of the Duplicate Page Content crawl, be pointed to referring url in the same spreadsheet? Or, what's the best way to apply the 301 redirect? thanks!0 -
E-commerce duplicate URLS
Hi I just realized that my e-commerce products do not have any difference except the SKUS, PRICE and THE PRODUCT name. Apart from each page has the same sidebar and a piece of content ( same ) under each product pages. And this is the reason why i am getting too many duplicate urls warning through Moz analytics. I do not have any other contents to add for each product because of the nature of the product. Only the price, product name and the SKUs will be different and rest will all be same for each products. How can i fix this ? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MindlessWizard0 -
Duplicate Content: Is a product feed/page rolled out across subdomains deemed duplicate content?
A company has a TLD (top-level-domain) which every single product: company.com/product/name.html The company also has subdomains (tailored to a range of products) which lists a choosen selection of the products from the TLD - sort of like a feed: subdomain.company.com/product/name.html The content on the TLD & subdomain product page are exactly the same and cannot be changed - CSS and HTML is slightly differant but the content (text and images) is exactly the same! My concern (and rightly so) is that Google will deem this to be duplicate content, therfore I'm going to have to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of all subdomain pages, pointing to the original product page on the TLD. Does this sound like the correct thing to do? Or is there a better solution? Moving on, not only are products fed onto subdomain, there are a handfull of other domains which list the products - again, the content (text and images) is exactly the same: other.com/product/name.html Would I be best placed to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of the product pages on other domains, pointing to the original product page on the actual TLD? Does rel cannonical work across domains? Would the product pages with a rel cannonical tag in the header still rank? Let me know if there is a better solution all-round!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iam-sold0 -
Duplicate keyphrases in page titles = penalty?
Hello Mozzers - just looking at a website which has duplicate keyphrases in its page titles... So you have [keyphrase 1] | [exact match Keyphrase 1] Now I happen to know this particular site has suffered a dramatic fall in traffic - the SEO agency working on the site had advised the client to duplicate keyphrases. Hard to believe, huh! What I'm wondering is whether this extensive exact match keyphrase duplication might've been enough to attract a penalty? Your thoughts would be welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Pagination for Ecommerce Site - How do I fix this?
Hi Everyone... I'm having issues on how I should fix the pagination on my ecommerce site http://www.moondoggieinc.com Right now I have rel="canonical" putting them all back to the main page like on: http://www.moondoggieinc.com/dog-harness.php but there are also some shop all categories like: http://www.moondoggieinc.com/products.php?cat=all+dog+harnesses But I wish I could get it so that the content only showed on the first page of them all and then just the products showed in the pagination after that. I have no clue how to make this happen successfully. I know this is a big problem with the structure to the site, creating some duplicate content and such, and I was wondering how I can even begin to go ahead and start tackling this. My background is as a designer so I'm just learning both seo, and anyhting past html / css, so I could really use any help you guys can offer. THANK YOU! KristyO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO0 -
My site is duplicated on the internet, please help.
I've been told that my site: "- your site is duplicated on the internet. Both www.joeyvalyphotography.com and joeyvalyphotography.com are valid internet addresses. This is a problem for SEO." I am wondering, what's the cause of this, and how it can fixed. Thanks In advanced, Joey
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaji0 -
How do I fix the error duplicate page content and duplicate page title?
On my site www.millsheating.co.uk I have the error message as per the question title. The conflict is coming from these two pages which are effectively the same page: www.millsheating.co.uk www.millsheating.co.uk/index I have added a htaccess file to the root folder as I thought (hoped) it would fix the problem but I doesn't appear to have done so. this is the content of the htaccess file: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^millsheating.co.uk RewriteRule (.*) http://www.millsheating.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.millsheating.co.uk/ [R=301,L] AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonHegarty0