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
-
Partial duplicate content (reviews) on product pages - is this ok?
Hello, we recently received some really good reviews about a range of products we sell (there are normally 8 products in a range). Due to the industry we are in it made no sense to try and get reviews on each individual product within the range as they differ only ever so slightly. So my question is we want to add these reviews to each of the 8 products that lie within each range, but by adding them it would mean that each page has around 600 words of unique product description followed by approx 600 words of reviews that are the same on each of the products within that range. Is this ok? my only other option would be to screenshot the reviews and upload them as images below each product description. If anyone could offer advice here that would be much appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | livs20130 -
Duplicate Content Brainstorming
Hi, New here in the SEO world. Excellent resources here. We have an ecommerce website that sells presentation templates. Today our templates come in 3 flavours - for PowerPoint, for Keynote and both - called Presentation Templates. So we've ended up with 3 URLS with similar content. Same screenshots, similar description.. Example: https://www.improvepresentation.com/keynote-templates/social-media-keynote-template https://www.improvepresentation.com/powerpoint-templates/social-media-powerpoint-template https://www.improvepresentation.com/presentation-templates/social-media-presentation-template I know what you're thinking. Why not make a website with a template and give 3 download options right? But what about https://www.improvepresentation.com/powerpoint-templates/ https://www.improvepresentation.com/keynote-templates/ These are powerfull URL's in my opinion taking into account that the strongest keyword in our field is "powerpoint templates" How would you solve this "problem" or maybe there is no problem at all.
Technical SEO | | slidescamp0 -
Duplicate Content
Crawl Diagnostics has returned several issues that I'm unsure how to fix. I'm guessing it's a canonical link issue but not entirely sure... Duplicate Page Content/Titles On a website (http://www.smselectronics.co.uk/market-sectors) with 6 market sectors but each pull the same 3 pages as child pages - certifications, equipment & case studies. On each products section where the page only shows X amount of items but there are several pages to fit all the products this creates multiple pages. There is also a similar pagination problem with the Blogs (auto generated date titles & user created SEO titles) & News listings. Blog Tags also seem to generate duplicate pages with the same content/titles as the parent page. Are these particularly important for SEO or is it more important to remove the duplication by deleting them? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | BBDCreative0 -
Duplicate Page Content but where?
Hi All Moz is telling me I have duplicate page content and sure enough the PA MR mT are all 0 but it doesnt give me a link to this content! This is the page: http://www.orsgroup.com/index.php?page=Scanning-services But I cant find where the duplicate content is other than on our own youtube page which I will get removed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnjh9jkAWuA Can anyone help please? Andy
Technical SEO | | ORS-Group0 -
Wordpress tags and duplicate content?
I've seen a few other Q&A posts on this but I haven't found a complete answer. I read somewhere a while ago that you can use as many tags as you would like. I found that I rank for each tag I used. For example, I could rank for best night clubs in san antonio, good best night clubs in san antonio, great best night clubs in san antonio, top best night clubs in san antonio, etc. However, I now see that I'm creating a ton of duplicate content. Is there any way to set a canonical tag on the tag pages to link back to the original post so that I still keep my rankings? Would future tags be ignored if I did this?
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
Duplicate Page Content / Rel Canonical
Hi, The diagnostics shows me that I have 590 Duplicate Page Content , but when it shows the Rel Canonical I have over 1000, so dose that mean I have no Duplicate Page Content problem? Please help.
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Strange duplicate content issue
Hi there, SEOmoz crawler has identified a set of duplicate content that we are struggling to resolve. For example, the crawler picked up that this page www. creative - choices.co.uk/industry-insight/article/Advice-for-a-freelance-career is a duplicate of this page www. creative - choices.co.uk/develop-your-career/article/Advice-for-a-freelance-career. The latter page's content is the original and can be found in the CMS admin area whilst the former page is the duplicate and has no entry in the CMS. So we don't know where to begin if the "duplicate" page doesn't exist in the CMS. The crawler states that this page www. creative-choices.co.uk/industry-insight/inside/creative-writing is the referrer page. Looking at it, only the original page's link is showing on the referrer page, so how did the crawler get to the duplicate page?
Technical SEO | | CreativeChoices0 -
Duplicate content?
I have a question regarding a warning that I got on one of my websites, it says Duplicate content. I'm canonical url:s and is also using blocking Google out from pages that you are warning me about. The pages are not indexed by Google, why do I get the warnings? Thanks for great seotools! 3M5AY.png
Technical SEO | | bnbjbbkb0