Pages with duplicate meta descriptions
-
We have around 17 pages have underscores in the URL. From the 17 pages, we have changed 3 pages URL for example if the url is test_sample_demo.html, we have changed as test-sample-demo.html
After the updates, we have made redirect as follows
Redirect 301 test_sample_demo.html test-sample-demo.html
Presently google webmaster tool shows as "Pages with duplicate meta descriptions" & "Pages with duplicate title tags" for changed pages
How to fix this. Please help us
-
Hi,
It sounds like the 301 isn't implemented correctly OR Google didn't yet crawl the old URLs after you implemented the redirect.
How long ago did you change the URLs? If it's only a few days ago I'd just wait for Google to crawl your old URLs again and detect the 301.
Hope it helps.
-
This is likely to be Google's auditing system (from within Google Search Console) errors and is (probably) not your fault. If pages which are redirecting are being flagged as having duplicate Meta descriptions, that is demonstrably and necessarily factually inaccurate. A page which redirects somewhere else **never serves its source code **to Google, users or anyone else (assuming that the redirect is global, of course). If the source code is never seen, Google should not be able to find any Meta description let alone a duplicate one.
In all likelihood Google is comparing the new URLs against cached versions of the old pages (instead of re-visiting the old addresses as live URLs like it should do). As such it believes there's duplicate Meta data. When it eventually bothers to _actually _re-crawl the old URLs - it will eventually work out its issues and fix itself. If you want to speed it along, Fetch and render the old URLs so that Google knows they are actually redirecting now. Following that, spam the 'mark as fixed' thing until it complies with your work.
If however you are exempting Google from those particular redirects (maybe via the Googlebot user-agent), then obviously it can't see the redirects and is still accessing the old page-versions. Make sure that Google follows 301 redirects in the same way that users are forced to.
Be sure to test the redirects manually using something like this chrome extension. Test that the redirects work. Set your user-agent to Googlebot, do a hard refresh to clear your cache - try the page again. Try using a VPN to access the redirects from servers in different locations (try the UK, somewhere in Europe, the USA). Sometimes redirects are 'conditional' and if Google is somehow slipping through the net, that's a problem for you. Never just accept "well someone told me it was coded like this so it must always apply". Test manually, work out the real truth
Hope that helps!
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
-
Site's meta description is not being shown in Google Search results. Instead our privacy policy is getting indexed.
We re-launched our new site and put in the re-directs. Our site is https://www.fico.com/en. When I search for "fico" in Google. I see the privacy policy getting indexed as meta descriptions instead of our actual meta description. I have edited the meta description, requested Google to re-index our site. Not sure what to do next? Thanks for your advise.
Technical SEO | | gosheen0 -
Does Google still use Meta descriptions?
I've noticed that Google is not using my Meta description in the SERP results but rather text from my page, it seems to be a similar situation with a couple of the other sites in the same search results. Does anyone know why this would be?
Technical SEO | | OUTsurance0 -
Duplicate Page Titles Across Portfolio Items
Hi, Quick question about duplicate page titles. I have a few duplicate pages where I've got lots of portfolio items under the same category, lets call it a portfolio of kangaroos. I can see there are separate URLs for each of the pages, i.e, www.blahblah.com/portfolio/kangaroos and www.blahblah.com/portfolio/kangaroos/2, but they both have the same page title, i.e, Kangaroos Portfolio | Domain and it's coming up in Moz as a medium priority duplicate page title error. Where in WordPress can I change the page title for the second page of portfolio items? Thanks very much! Tom.
Technical SEO | | onefoursix0 -
Why are some pages now duplicate content?
It is probably a silly question, but all of a sudden, the following pages of one of my clients are reported as Duplicate content. I cannot understand why. They weren't before... http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/mediterranea-halal
Technical SEO | | MarketingEnergy
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/gyros-halal
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/döner-halal
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/vegetariana
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/seizoen-pizza-estate
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/contadina
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/4-stagioni
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/shoarma Thanks for any help in the right direction 🙂 | |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| | <colgroup><col style="mso-width-source: userset; mso-width-alt: 17225; width: 353pt;" width="471"></colgroup>
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/mediterranea-halal |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/gyros-halal |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/döner-halal |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/vegetariana |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/seizoen-pizza-estate |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/contadina |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/4-stagioni |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/shoarma |0 -
Duplicate Page Title
Hi I just got back from first crawl report and there were plenty of errors. I know this has been asked before but I am newbie here so bear with me. I captured the video. Any ideas on how to address the issue? ktXKDxRttK
Technical SEO | | mcardenal0 -
Duplicate Page content / Rel=Cannonical
My SEO Moz crawl is showing duplicate content on my site. What is showing up are two articles I submitted to Submit your article (article submission service). I put their code in to my pages i.e. " <noscript><b>This article will only display in JavaScript enabled browsers.</b></noscript> " So do I need to delete these blog posts since they are showing up as dup content? I am having a difficult time understanding rel=cannonical. Isn't this for dup content on within one site? So I could not use rel="cannonical" in this instance? What is the best way to feature an article or press release written for another site, but that you want your clients to see? Rewritting seem ridiculous for a small business like ours. Can we just present the link? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Duplicate Page Content Report
In Crawl Diagnostics Summary, I have 2000 duplicate page content. When I click the link, my Wordpress return "page not found" and I see it's not indexed by Google, and I could not find the issue in Google Webmaster. So where does this link come from?
Technical SEO | | smallwebsite0 -
How do I fix this type of duplicate page content problem?
Sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Content URLs Internal Links External Links Page Authority Linking Root Domains http://rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html 30 0 26 1 http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html 30 0 20 1 http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/ | 1,630 | 613 | 43 | 110 | As you can see there are three duplicate pages; http://rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/ What would be the best and most efficient way to fix this problem and also how to prevent this from happening? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | brianhughes0