Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Capitals in url creates duplicate content?
-
Hey Guys,
I had a quick look around however I couldn't find a specific answer to this.
Currently, the SEOmoz tools come back and show a heap of duplicate content on my site. And there's a fair bit of it.
However, a heap of those errors are relating to random capitals in the urls.
for example.
"www.website.com.au/Home/information/Stuff" is being treated as duplicate content of "www.website.com.au/home/information/stuff" (Note the difference in capitals).
Anyone have any recommendations as to how to fix this server side(keeping in mind it's not practical or possible to fix all of these links) or to tell Google to ignore the capitalisation?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
LM.
-
The IIS url-rewrite addon works great!
-
From my memory Google does treat urls as case sensitive.
Best to keep al urls as lower case.
-
Thanks for your reply Alan!
Bing is irrelevant in Belgium
Maybe marketshare of 0,00005 or so When I look at the SEOMoz crawling reports I panic, but when I look at GWT, I'm happy... The difference is huge.
So, no sure I will keep on using these reports..
-
I don't know that Google does ignore it. anyhow Bing does not http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-page-contains-multiple-canonical-formats
-
If Google ignores the mixed usage of capitals in URL's, then why is the SEOMoz reporting it? If it is irrelevant, why not leaving it out?? It takes quite some work to filter out the irrelevant stuff!
-
Thanks Semil - The same duplicates are not showing in Google Webmaster Tools, for instance SEOMoz is showing 639 duplicate page content and 646 duplicate page titles. Webmaster tools is 88 and 37 respectively.
Looking into the numbers in SEOmoz again (and they've risen since the original post) there's a huge number which fall under the capitalisation discussed but also some which seem to register as HTTPS and HTTP.
-
Thanks Alan - I'll get on this...
-
Yes its seen as too different urls
http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-page-contains-multiple-canonical-formats
If you are uisng a windows server (IIS), you can fix this easy by using the IIS url-rewrite addon. it had a rewite as lowercase preset
-
Google does count this as duplicate content. Semil is right. You want to have someone do url rewrites on the server side to 301 these to lowercase.
-
Hi LucasM,
Yes its possible by server side that you cant open a url with capital letters if you are using small letters.
But I dont think google will talke capitalisation in consideration.
Is it showing you in Google webmaster tool in duplicate titles and duplicate descriptions ?
If its showing then ask your coder to play with .htaccess to stop opening a url with different small - capital letter combination.
Thanks,
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
-
Different content on the same URL depending on the IP address of the visitor
Hi! Does anybody have any expierence on the SEO impact when changing the content of a page depending on the IP address of the visitor? Would be text content as well as meta information. This happening on the same URL. Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Schoellerallibert0 -
Duplicate content in Shopify - subsequent pages in collections
Hello everyone! I hope an expert in this community can help me verify the canonical codes I'll add to our store is correct. Currently, in our Shopify store, the subsequent pages in the collections are not indexed by Google, however the canonical URL on these pages aren't pointing to the main collection page (page 1), e.g. The canonical URL of page 2, page 3 etc are used as canonical URLs instead of the first page of the collections. I have the canonical codes attached below, it would be much appreciated if an expert can urgently verify these codes are good to use and will solve the above issues? Thanks so much for your kind help in advance!! -----------------CODES BELOW--------------- <title><br /> {{ page_title }}{% if current_tags %} – tagged "{{ current_tags | join: ', ' }}"{% endif %}{% if current_page != 1 %} – Page {{ current_page }}{% endif %}{% unless page_title contains shop.name %} – {{ shop.name }}{% endunless %}<br /></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ycnetpro101
{% if page_description %} {% endif %} {% if current_page != 1 %} {% else %} {% endif %}
{% if template == 'collection' %}{% if collection %}
{% if current_page == 1 %} {% endif %}
{% if template == 'product' %}{% if product %} {% endif %}
{% if template == 'collection' %}{% if collection %} {% endif %}0 -
Duplicate URLs ending with #!
Hi guys, Does anyone know why a site can contain duplicate URLs ending with hastag & exclamation mark e.g. https://site.com.au/#! We are finding a lot of these URLs (as duplicates) and i was wondering what they are from developer standpoint? And do you think it's worth the time and effort adding a rel canonical tag or 301 to these URLs eventhough they're not getting indexed by Google? Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Removing duplicate content
Due to URL changes and parameters on our ecommerce sites, we have a massive amount of duplicate pages indexed by google, sometimes up to 5 duplicate pages with different URLs. 1. We've instituted canonical tags site wide. 2. We are using the parameters function in Webmaster Tools. 3. We are using 301 redirects on all of the obsolete URLs 4. I have had many of the pages fetched so that Google can see and index the 301s and canonicals. 5. I created HTML sitemaps with the duplicate URLs, and had Google fetch and index the sitemap so that the dupes would get crawled and deindexed. None of these seems to be terribly effective. Google is indexing pages with parameters in spite of the parameter (clicksource) being called out in GWT. Pages with obsolete URLs are indexed in spite of them having 301 redirects. Google also appears to be ignoring many of our canonical tags as well, despite the pages being identical. Any ideas on how to clean up the mess?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Case Sensitive URLs, Duplicate Content & Link Rel Canonical
I have a site where URLs are case sensitive. In some cases the lowercase URL is being indexed and in others the mixed case URL is being indexed. This is leading to duplicate content issues on the site. The site is using link rel canonical to specify a preferred URL in some cases however there is no consistency whether the URLs are lowercase or mixed case. On some pages the link rel canonical tag points to the lowercase URL, on others it points to the mixed case URL. Ideally I'd like to update all link rel canonical tags and internal links throughout the site to use the lowercase URL however I'm apprehensive! My question is as follows: If I where to specify the lowercase URL across the site in addition to updating internal links to use lowercase URLs, could this have a negative impact where the mixed case URL is the one currently indexed? Hope this makes sense! Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allianzireland0 -
Real Estate MLS listings - Does Google Consider duplicate content?
I have a real estate website. The site has all residential properties for sale in a certain State (MLS property listings). These properties also appear on 100's of other real estate sites, as the data is pulled from a central place where all Realtors share their listings. Question: will having these MLS listings indexed and followed by Google increase the ratio of duplicate vs original content on my website and thus negatively affect ranking for various keywords? If so, should I set the specific property pages as "no index, no follow" so my website will appear to have less duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Tabs and duplicate content?
We own this site http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/ and just a little concerned as I right clicked open in new tab on the tab content section and it went to a new page For example if you right click on the price tab and click open in new tab you will end up with the url
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson
http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/#tabThree Does this mean that our content is being duplicated onto another page? If so what should I do?0 -
Concerns about duplicate content issues with australian and us version of website
My company has an ecommerce website that's been online for about 5 years. The url is www.betterbraces.com. We're getting ready to launch an australian version of the website and the url will be www.betterbraces.com.au. The australian website will have the same look as the US website and will contain about 200 of the same products that are featured on the US website. The only major difference between the two websites is the price that is charged for the products. The australian website will be hosted on the same server as the US website. To ensure Australians don't purchase from the US site we are going to have a geo redirect in place that sends anyone with a AU ip address to the australian website. I am concerned that the australian website is going to have duplicate content issues. However, I'm not sure if the fact that the domains are so similar coupled with the redirect will help the search engines understand that these sites are related. I would appreciate any recommendations on how to handle this situation to ensure oue rankings in the search engines aren't penalized. Thanks in advance for your help. Alison French
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djo-2836690