301ed Pages Still Showing as Duplicate Content in GWMT
-
I thank anyone reading this for their consideration and time.
We are a large site with millions of URLs for our product pages. We are also a textbook company, so by nature, our products have two separate ISBNs: a 10 digit and a 13 digit form. Thus, every one of our books has at least two pages (10 digit and 13 digit ISBN page). My issue is that we have established a 301 for all the 10 digit URLs so they automatically redirect to the 13 digit page. This fix has been in place for months. However, Google still reports that they are detecting thousands of pages with duplicate title and meta tags. Google is referring to these page URLs that I already have 301ed to the canonical version many months ago! Is there anything that I can do to fix this issue? I don't understand what I am doing wrong.
Example:
http://www.bookbyte.com/product.aspx?isbn=9780321676672
http://www.bookbyte.com/product.aspx?isbn=032167667XAs you can see the 10 digit ISBN page 301s to 13 digit canonical version. Google reports that they have detected duplicate title and meta tags between the two pages and there are thousands of these duplicate pages listed.
To add some further context: The ISBN is just a parameter that allows us to provide content when someone searches for a product with the 10 or 13 digit ISBN. The 13 digit version of the page is the only physical page that exists, the 10 digit is only a part of the virtual URL structure of the website. This is why I cannot simply change the title and meta tags of the 10 digit pages because they only exist in the sense that the URL redirects to the 13 digit version. Also, we submit a sitemap every day of all the 13 digit pages so Google knows exactly what our physical URL structure is. I have submitted this question to GWMT forums and received no replies.
-
It's solved then, the problem definitely lies within our code. Thanks a lot guys really appreciate your time.
-
http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/ and http://www.seomastering.com/url-redirect-checker.php both say 'not search friendly'.
Kind of weird, some other tools are showing a 301. Even more weird, when i visit the url, it looks masked and i see http://www.bookbyte.com/productv3.aspx?isbn=9780321676672 (note the "productv3.aspx") which is different from what any of the tools bring back. I'm not a dev so i cant help much more. Something weird going on and i assume that's what google is seeing too.
best of luck!
-
Thomas,
The reason the process is not working properly is your 10 digit ISBN pages are not being redirected properly. I tried visiting your 10 digit example: http://www.bookbyte.com/product.aspx?isbn=032167667X. I am redirected to the 13 digit page, but the header code returned is 200 which means "all is ok". There should be a 301 code returned. The entire point of the 301 code is to let others (i.e. Google) know the content has moved and they should update their records. Because the 200 code is being returned, no updates are being made.
Bottom line, the redirect was not performed properly. Fix it and your issue will be resolved the next time Google crawls each page. It should take several weeks to completely resolve the issue on your site. I would recommend making the change, confirming it, then waiting 30 days and check WMT.
-
Ricko,
Thanks a lot for the response greatly appreciated. I just got done looking at the code, again, with the IT guys and they confirmed its a 301 redirect not a 302. Though you are correct the URL tool that you linked to says it is a 302. The mystery deepens. Any other tools that you know of that I can try?
-
Hi Thomas,
I'm seeing a 302 redirect on http://www.bookbyte.com/product.aspx?isbn=032167667X.
Maybe try this: http://www.webtoolhub.com/tn561352-url-redirection-checker.aspx
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
-
Duplicate Content and Subdirectories
Hi there and thank you in advance for your help! I'm seeking guidance on how to structure a resources directory (white papers, webinars, etc.) while avoiding duplicate content penalties. If you go to /resources on our site, there is filter function. If you filter for webinars, the URL becomes /resources/?type=webinar We didn't want that dynamic URL to be the primary URL for webinars, so we created a new page with the URL /resources/webinar that lists all of our webinars and includes a featured webinar up top. However, the same webinar titles now appear on the /resources page and the /resources/webinar page. Will that cause duplicate content issues? P.S. Not sure if it matters, but we also changed the URLs for the individual resource pages to include the resource type. For example, one of our webinar URLs is /resources/webinar/forecasting-your-revenue Thank you!
Technical SEO | | SAIM_Marketing0 -
Duplicate content, although page has "noindex"
Hello, I had an issue with some pages being listed as duplicate content in my weekly Moz report. I've since discussed it with my web dev team and we decided to stop the pages from being crawled. The web dev team added this coding to the pages <meta name='robots' content='max-image-preview:large, noindex dofollow' />, but the Moz report is still reporting the pages as duplicate content. Note from the developer "So as far as I can see we've added robots to prevent the issue but maybe there is some subtle change that's needed here. You could check in Google Search Console to see how its seeing this content or you could ask Moz why they are still reporting this and see if we've missed something?" Any help much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
Big page of clients - links to individual client pages with light content - not sure if canonical or no-follow - HELP
Not sure what best practice here is: http://www.5wpr.com/clients/ Is this is a situation where I'm best off adding canonical tags back to the main clients page, or to the practice area each client falls under? No-following all these links and adding canonical? No-follow/No-index all client pages? need some advice here...
Technical SEO | | simplycary0 -
Magento Duplicate Content help!
How can I remove the duplicate page content in my Magento store from being read as duplicate. I added the Magento robots file that i have used on many stores and it keeps giving us errors. Also we have enabled the canonical links in magento admin I am getting 3616 errors and can't seem to get around it .. any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | adamxj20 -
Duplicate Content Errors
Ok, old fat client developer new at SEO so I apologize if this is obvious. I have 4 errors in one of my campaigns. two are duplicate content and two are duplicate title. Here is the duplicate title error Rare Currency And Old Paper Money Values and Information.
Technical SEO | | Banknotes
http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/ Rare Currency And Old Paper Money Values and Information.
http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/Default.aspx So, my question is... What do I need to do to make this right? They are the same page. in my page load for default.aspx I have this: this.Title = "Rare Currency And Old Paper Money Values and Information."; And it occurs only once...0 -
Duplicate Meta Description in GWMT
We've just discovered that there are multiple duplicate URLs indexed for a site that we're working on. It seems that when new versions of the site was developed in the last couple of years, there were new page names and URL structures that were used. All of these seem to be showing up as Duplicate Meta Descriptions in Google's WMT, which is not surprising as they are basically the same page with the same content that are just sitting on different page names/URLs. This is an example of the situation, where URL 5 is the current version. Note: all the others are still live and resolve, although they are not linked to from the current site. URL 1: www.example.com/blue-tshirts.html (Version 1 - January 2010) URL 2: www.example.com/blue-t-shirts.html (Version 2 - July 2010) URL 3: www.example.com/blue_t_shirts.html (Version 3 - November 2010) URL 4: www.example.com/buy/blue_tshirts.html (Version 4 - January 2011) URL 5: www.example.com/buy/bluetshirts.html (Version 5 - April 2011) Presumably, this is a clear case of duplicate content. QUESTION: In order to solve it, shall we 301 all of the previous URLs to the current one - ie. Redirect URLs 1-4 to URL 5? Or, should some of them be NoIndexed? To complicate matters, there is Pagination on most of them. For example: URL 1: www.example.com/blue-tshirts.html (Version 1 - January 2010) URL 1a: www.example.com/page-1/blue-tshirts.html URL 1b: www.example.com/page-2/blue-tshirts.html URL 1c: www.example.com/page-3/blue-tshirts.html URL 4: www.example.com/buy/blue_tshirts.html URL 4a: www.example.com/buy/page-1/blue_tshirts.html URL 4b: www.example.com/buy/page-2/blue_tshirts.html URL 4c: www.example.com/buy/page-3/blue_tshirts.html URL 5: www.example.com/buy/bluetshirts.html URL 5a: www.example.com/buy/page-1/bluetshirts.html URL 5b: www.example.com/buy/page-2/bluetshirts.html URL 5c: www.example.com/buy/page-3/bluetshirts.html Since URL 5 is the current site, we are going to 'NoIndex, Follow' URLs 5a, 5b and 5c, which is what we understand to be the correct thing to do for paginated pages. QUESTION: What shall we do with URLs 1a, 1b and 1c? Should we apply the same "No Index, Follow" OR should they be 301'd to their respective counterparts in 5a, 5b and 5c? QUESTION: In the same way, since URL 4 is the version just before the current live Version 5, does it make a different on whether the paginated pages (ie 4a, 4b and 4c) should be No Indexed or 301'd? Thanks in advance for all responses and suggestions, it's greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | orangechew0 -
Duplicate Content Resolution Suggestion?
SEOmoz tools is saying there is duplicate content for: www.mydomain.com www.mydomain.com/index.html What would be the best way to resolve this "error"?
Technical SEO | | PlasticCards0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a main sales page and then we have a country specific sales page for about 250 countries. The country specific pages are identical to the main sales page, with the small addition of a country flag and the country name in the h1. I have added a rel canonical tag to all country pages to send the link juice and authority to the main page, because they would be all competing for rankings. I was wondering if having the 250+ indexed pages of duplicate content will effect the ranking of the main page even though they have rel canonical tag. We get some traffic to country pages, but not as much as the main page, but im worried that if we remove those pages and redirect all to main page that we will loose 250 plus indexed pages where we can get traffic through for odd country specific terms. eg searching for uk mobile phone brings up the country specific page instead of main sales page even though the uk sales pages is not optimized for uk terms other than having a flag and the country name in the h1. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | -Al-0