"Duplicate" Page Titles and Content
-
Hi All,
This is a rather lengthy one, so please bear with me!
SEOmoz has recently crawled 10,000 webpages from my site, FrenchEntree, and has returned 8,000 errors of duplicate page content. The main reason I have so many is because of the directories I have on site.
The site is broken down into 2 levels of hierachy. "Weblets" and "Articles". A weblet is a landing page, and articles are created within these weblets. Weblets can hold any number of articles - 0 - 1,000,000 (in theory) and an article must be assigned to a weblet in order for it to work. Here's how it roughly looks in URL form - http://www.mysite.com/[weblet]/[articleID]/
Now; our directory results pages are weblets with standard content in the left and right hand columns, but the information in the middle column is pulled in from our directory database following a user query. This happens by adding the query string to the end of the URL. We have 3 main directory databases, but perhaps around 100 weblets promoting various 'canned' queries that users may want to navigate straight into. However, any one of the 100 directory promoting weblets could return any query from the parent directory database with the correct query string. The problem with this method (as pointed out by the 8,000 errors) is that each possible permutation of search is considered to be it's own URL, and therefore, it's own page.
The example I will use is the first alphabetically. "Activity Holidays in France":
http://www.frenchentree.com/activity-holidays-france/ - This link shows you a results weblet without the query at the end, and therefore only displays the left and right hand columns as populated.
http://www.frenchentree.com/activity-holidays-france/home.asp?CategoryFilter= - This link shows you the same weblet with the an 'open' query on the end. I.e. display all results from this database. Listings are displayed in the middle.
There are around 500 different URL permutations for this weblet alone when you take into account the various categories and cities a user may want to search in.
What I'd like to do is to prevent SEOmoz (and therefore search engines) from counting each individual query permutation as a unique page, without harming the visibility that the directory results received in SERPs. We often appear in the top 5 for quite competitive keywords and we'd like it to stay that way. I also wouldn't want the search engine results to only display (and therefore direct the user through to) an empty weblet by some sort of robot exclusion or canonical classification.
Does anyone have any advice on how best to remove the "duplication" problem, whilst keeping the search visibility? All advice welcome.
Thanks
Matt
-
Thanks for the swift response, Gianluca. I think I understand the problem you have pointed out, but I'm rather surprised that it has been set up in such a way... Or that that would have more of an adverse affect than multiple URLs with the same standard content. I'm willing to change that to see if it fixes the problem though.
Please take all of the time you need... It is a very large site which has been pieced together, bit-by-bit, over many years!
Matt
-
In addition to Gianluca's response there, the pages that you tag with "noindex,follow" (i.e. the duplicates) add a canonical tag pointing at the original page.
-
I think your problem of duplicated content is also due the pagination your categories (or no categories search result) have. Checking the second url you gave http://www.frenchentree.com/activity-holidays-france/home.asp?order=Sort1&option=&CategoryFilter=&webname=activity-holidays-france&webname=activity-holidays-france&pagenumber=1 and it "second" page http://www.frenchentree.com/activity-holidays-france/home.asp?order=Sort1&option=&CategoryFilter=&webname=activity-holidays-france&pagenumber=2 I noticed that you have the meta robots in the head... therefore the bots see and index all these paginated content, that is a substantial duplicate of page 1. I suggest you to start adding the noindex,follow meta robots in these pages. About other duplication issues... give me time, as your site is not so easy
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 issues on same page with urls to multiple tabs?
Hello everyone! I'm first time here, and glad to be part of Moz community! Jumping right into the question I have. For a type of pages we have on our website, there are multiple tabs on each page. To give an example, let's say a page is for the information about a place called "Ladakh". Now the various urls that the page is accessible from, can take the form of: mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/ mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/photos/ mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/places-to-visit/ and so on. To keep the UX smooth when the user switches from one tab to another, we load everything in advance with AJAX but it remains hidden till the user switches to the required tab. Now since the content is actually there in the html, does Google count it as duplicate content? I'm afraid this might be the case as when I Google for a text that's visible only on one of the tabs, I still see all tabs in Google results. I also see internal links on GSC to say a page mywanderlust.in/questions which is only supposed to be linked from one tab, but GSC telling internal links to this page (mywanderlust.in/questions) from all those 3 tabs. Also, Moz Pro crawl reports informed me about duplicate content issues, although surprisingly it says the issue exists only on a small fraction of our indexable pages. Is it hurting our SEO? Any suggestions on how we could handle the url structure better to make it optimal for indexing. FWIW, we're using a fully responsive design with the displayed content being exactly same for both desktop and mobile web. Thanks a ton in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atulgoyal0 -
WordPress – parent category "blog" instead of regular "post page"?
In WordPress you normally show you blog posts on: Your home page. Your "posts page" (configurable in the Reading Settings) I want to do neither and have a third option instead: Assign a parent category called "blog" for all posts, and show the latest posts on that category's archive page. For the readers, the experience will be 100% the same as a regular "posts page". The UI, permalinks, and breadcrumbs will be 100% the same. But, I have heard that the "posts page" is important for Google for indexing and understanding your blog. So is is smarter SEO-wise to use a "posts page" instead of a parent category named "blog"? What negative effects might there be, if I have no "posts page" and just use the parent category "blog" instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikolasB0 -
On Page Content. has a H2 Tag but should I also use H3 tags for the sub headings within this body of content
Hi Mozzers, My on page content comes under my H2 tag. I have a few subheadings within my content to help break it up etc and currently this is just underlined (not bold or anything) and I am wondering from an SEO perspective, should I be making these sub headings H3 tags. Otherwise , I just have 500-750 words of content under an H2 tag which is what I am currently doing on my landing pages. thanks pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Duplicate content question
Hi there, I work for a Theater news site. We have an issue where our system creates a chunk of duplicate content in Google's eyes and we're not sure how best to solve. When an editor produces a video, it simultaneously 1) creates a page with it's own static URL (e.g. http://www.theatermania.com/video/mary-louise-parker-tommy-tune-laura-osnes-and-more_668.html); and 2) displays said video on a public index page (http://www.theatermania.com/videos/). Since the content is very similar, Google sees them as duplicate. What should we do about this? We were thinking that one solution would to be dynamically canonicalize the index page to the static page whenever a new video is posted, but would Google frown on this? Alternatively, should we simply nofollow the index page? Lastly, are there any solutions we may have missed entirely?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
HELP! How does one prevent regional pages as being counted as "duplicate content," "duplicate meta descriptions," et cetera...?
The organization I am working with has multiple versions of its website geared towards the different regions. US - http://www.orionhealth.com/ CA - http://www.orionhealth.com/ca/ DE - http://www.orionhealth.com/de/ UK - http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/ AU - http://www.orionhealth.com/au/ NZ - http://www.orionhealth.com/nz/ Some of these sites have very similar pages which are registering as duplicate content, meta descriptions and titles. Two examples are: http://www.orionhealth.com/terms-and-conditions http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/terms-and-conditions Now even though the content is the same, the navigation is different since each region has different product options / services, so a redirect won't work since the navigation on the main US site is different from the navigation for the UK site. A rel=canonical seems like a viable option, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it tells search engines to only index the main page, in this case, it would be the US version, but I still want the UK site to appear to search engines. So what is the proper way of treating similar pages accross different regional directories? Any insight would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
What our peoples list from from 1 to 10 the most important "on page" Factors
we are all at different stages in our SEO and all have different skills and experiences would like to see if people have the same list or similar with this question.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Canonical Not Fixing Duplicate Content
I added a canonical tag to the home page last month, but I am still showing duplicate content for the home page. Here is the tag I added: What am I missing? Duplicate-Content.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InnoInsulation0 -
Fixing Duplicate Content Errors
SEOMOZ Pro is showing some duplicate content errors and wondered the best way to fix them other than re-writing the content. Should I just remove the pages found or should I set up permanent re-directs through to the home page in case there is any link value or visitors on these duplicate pages? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benners0