Does redirecting a duplicate page NOT in Google‘s index pass link juice? (External links not showing in search console)
-
Hello! We have a powerful page that has been selected by Google as a duplicate page of another page on the site. The duplicate is not indexed by Google, and the referring domains pointing towards that page aren’t recognized by Google in the search console (when looking at the links report).
My question is - if we 301 redirect the duplicate page towards the one that Google has selected as canonical, will the link juice be passed to the new page?
Thanks!
-
@lewald1 Hey. A few questions for you...
Does the other page on your website canonical to the page Google is saying is a duplicate? If there is a canonical in place, that may explain why you aren't seeing the duplicate page in the links report. Google groups those by the canonical URL. If that is the case, though, you should see backlinks pointing to the duplicate page under the other page in the links report.
As well, how well is the other page on the site performing? Is it performing better than you'd expect based on that page's specific backlinks? If so, that might be a sign that Google is already collapsing the page they've said is a duplicate into that other page. If that is what is happening, the redirect wouldn't be a problem to add but you may not see much impact by adding that redirect.
As for the redirect, I think that could make sense to add it and generally, redirects are the best solution for duplication. A redirect is a stronger signal than the canonical and, in this case, the redirect would reinforce the signals Google is already seeing about the duplication. Of course, is there any reason you can't redirect this page into the one Google has selected as the canonical? Do you need that page for something else on your site (like as a landing page for ads)? If not, then adding the redirect would be a good way to resolve the duplication.
I 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
-
URL Injection Hack - What to do with spammy URLs that keep appearing in Google's index?
A website was hacked (URL injection) but the malicious code has been cleaned up and removed from all pages. However, whenever we run a site:domain.com in Google, we keep finding more spammy URLs from the hack. They all lead to a 404 error page since the hack was cleaned up in the code. We have been using the Google WMT Remove URLs tool to have these spammy URLs removed from Google's index but new URLs keep appearing every day. We looked at the cache dates on these URLs and they are vary in dates but none are recent and most are from a month ago when the initial hack occurred. My question is...should we continue to check the index every day and keep submitting these URLs to be removed manually? Or since they all lead to a 404 page will Google eventually remove these spammy URLs from the index automatically? Thanks in advance Moz community for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd0 -
Big discrepancies between pages in Google's index and pages in sitemap
Hi, I'm noticing a huge difference in the number of pages in Googles index (using 'site:' search) versus the number of pages indexed by Google in Webmaster tools. (ie 20,600 in 'site:' search vs 5,100 submitted via the dynamic sitemap.) Anyone know possible causes for this and how i can fix? It's an ecommerce site but i can't see any issues with duplicate content - they employ a very good canonical tag strategy. Could it be that Google has decided to ignore the canonical tag? Any help appreciated, Karen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digirank0 -
Why are bit.ly links being indexed and ranked by Google?
I did a quick search for "site:bit.ly" and it returns more than 10 million results. Given that bit.ly links are 301 redirects, why are they being indexed in Google and ranked according to their destination? I'm working on a similar project to bit.ly and I want to make sure I don't run into the same problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDatSB1 -
Ecommerce SEO - Indexed product pages are returning 404's due to product database removal. HELP!
Hi all, I recently took over an e-commerce start-up project from one of my co-workers (who left the job last week). This previous project manager had uploaded ~2000 products without setting up a robot.txt file, and as a result, all of the product pages were indexed by Google (verified via Google Webmaster Tool). The problem came about when he deleted the entire product database from our hosting service, godaddy and performed a fresh install of Prestashop on our hosting plan. All of the created product pages are now gone, and I'm left with ~2000 broken URL's returning 404's. Currently, the site does not have any products uploaded. From my knowledge, I have to either: canonicalize the broken URL's to the new corresponding product pages, or request Google to remove the broken URL's (I believe this is only a temporary solution, for Google honors URL removal request for 90 days) What is the best way to approach this situation? If I setup a canonicalization, would I have to recreate the deleted pages (to match the URL address) and have those pages redirect to the new product pages (canonicalization)? Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | byoung860 -
Does link juice pass along the URL or the folders? 10yr old PR 6 site
We have a website that is ~10yrs old and a PR 6. It has a bunch of legitimate links from .edu and .gov sites. Until now the owner has never blogged or added much content to the site. We have suggested that to grow his traffic organically he should add a worpress blog and get agressive with his content. The IT guy is concerned about putting a wordpress blog on the same server as the main site because of security issues with WP. They have a bunch of credit card info on file. So, would it be better to just put the blog on a subdomain like blog.mysite.com OR host the blog on another server but have the URL structure be mysite.com/blog? I have tried to pass as much juice as possible. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasonsixtwo0 -
My landing page changed in google's serp. I used to have a product page now I have a pdf?
I have been optimizing this page for a few weeks now and and have seen our page for up from 23rd to 11th on the serp's. I come to work today and not only have I dropped to 15 but I've also had my relevant product page replaced by this page . Not to mention the second page is a pdf! I am not sure what happened here but any advice on how I could fix this would be great. My site is www.mynaturalmarket.com and the keyword I'm working on is Zyflamend.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KenyonManu3-SEOSEM0 -
Home Page Link Juice Dilution
I have worked to build out a keyword targeted library of over 700 Guides of approx. 800 word each. They are specifically targeted at actionable verticals and contain 3x strategically placed CTAs in each article. So far, I have only managed to get a low level of uniques per day to this section of the website. This website's external backlinks are largely pointed at the home page. Furthermore, the home page has a footer link to 10,000 SEO crawl-able user generated profiles. These profiles have little potential for conversion and offer little value. Given the above information, I was hoping that someone could help me with the following questions: Is it possible that home page link juice is becoming diluted as result 10,000 user profiles being live on the site? If so, can a "no follow" on the home page footer link to the user profiles prevent the juice from transferring? Overall, I would like to redirect this PR5 domain's link juice to these guides where they will have a much higher conversion rate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TQContent0 -
Removing a Page From Google index
We accidentally generated some pages on our site that ended up getting indexed by google. We have corrected the issue on the site and we 404 all of those pages. Should we manually delete the extra pages from Google's index or should we just let Google figure out that they are 404'd? What the best practice here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbuckles0