How to remove Duplicate content due to url parameters from SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostics
-
Hello all
I'm currently getting back over 8000 crawl errors for duplicate content pages . Its a joomla site with virtuemart and 95% of the errors are for parameters in the url that the customer can use to filter products.
Google is handling them fine under webmaster tools parameters but its pretty hard to find the other duplicate content issues in SEOMoz with all of these in the way.
All of the problem parameters start with
?product_type_
Should i try and use the robot.txt to stop them from being crawled and if so what would be the best way to include them in the robot.txt
Any help greatly appreciated.
-
Hi Tom
It took a while but I got there in the end. I was using joomla 1.5 and I downloaded a component called "tag meta" which allows you to insert tags including the canonical tag on specific urls or more importantly urls which begin in a certain way. Now how you use it depends on how your sef urls are set up or what sef component you are using but you can put a canonical tag on every url in a section that has view-all-products in it.
So in one of my examples I put a canonical tag pointing to /maternity-tops.html (my main category page for that section) on every url that began with /maternity-tops/view-all-products
I hope this if of help to you. It takes a bit of playing around with but it worked for me. The component also has fairly good documentation.
Regards
Damien
-
Damien,
Are you able to explain how you were able to do this within virtuemart?
Thanks
Tom
-
So leave the 5 pages of dresses as they are because they are all original but have the canonical tag on all of the filter parameters pointing to Page 1 of dresses.
Thank you for your help Alan
-
It should be on all versions of the page, all pointing to the one version.
Search engines will then see all as one page
-
Hi Alan
Thanks for getting back to me so fast. I'm slightly confused on this so an example might help One of the pages is http://www.funkybumpmaternity.com/Maternity-Dresses.html.
There are 5 pages of dresses with options on the left allowing you to narrow that down by color, brand, occasion and style. Every time you select an option on combination of options on the left for example red it will generate a page with only red dresses and a url of http://www.funkybumpmaternity.com/Maternity-Dresses/View-all-products.html?product_type_1_Colour[0]=Red&product_type_1_Colour_comp=find_in_set_any&product_type_id=1
The options available are huge which I believe is why i'm getting so many duplicate content content issues on SEOMoz pro. Google is handling the parameters fine.
How should I implement the canonical tag? Should I have a tag on all filter pages referencing page 1 of the dresses? Should pages 2-5 have the tag on them? If so would this mean that the dresses on these pages would not be indexed?
-
This sounds more like a case for a canonical tag,
dont exculed with robots.txt this is akin to cutting off your arm, because you have a spliter in your finger.
When you exclude use robots, link juce passing though links to these pages is lost.
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
-
Is it normal for Moz to report on nofollow pages in crawl diagnostics?
I have a dev version of my website, for example, devwww.website.com. The htaccess page has a noindex and nofollow request, but I got crawl issues reported from these pages in my Moz report. Does this mean that I don't have the development site hidden from search like I thought I did?
Moz Pro | | houstonbrooke0 -
301 Redirects - But still duplicate content?
Our website domain website.com redirects to website.com/en (since it's in English). Therefore, all pages on website.com redirects to website.com/en. In my Moz analytics, it says I have duplicate content, and lists all of these pages. Didn't the 301 redirects take care of the duplicate content? Or do I still have to add canonical tags?
Moz Pro | | Taulia0 -
Setting a campaign in SEOmoz
Hi All, when i set a new campaign i am asked to decide if to use: domin-name.com Or www.domain-name.com Can someone please explain the different in terms of the campaign If i use: domain-name.com - will the campaign run on www.domain-name.com too? Thank you SEOwise
Moz Pro | | iivgi0 -
Crawl Diagnostics returning duplicate content based on session id
I'm just starting to dig into crawl diagnostics and it is returning quite a few errors. Primarily, the crawl is indicating duplicate content (page titles, meta tags, etc), because of a session id in the URL. I have set-up a URL parameter in Google Webmaster Tools to help Google recognize the existence of this session id. Is there any way to tell the SEOMoz spider the same thing? I'd like to get rid of these errors since I've already handled them for the most part.
Moz Pro | | csingsaas0 -
How to resolve Duplicate Content crawl errors for Magento Login Page
I am using the Magento shopping cart, and 99% of my duplicate content errors come from the login page. The URL looks like: http://www.site.com/customer/account/login/referer/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5tbW1zcGVjaW9zYS5jb20vcmV2aWV3L3Byb2R1Y3QvbGlzdC9pZC8xOTYvY2F0ZWdvcnkvNC8jcmV2aWV3LWZvcm0%2C/ Or, the same url but with the long string different from the one above. This link is available at the top of every page in my site, but I have made sure to add "rel=nofollow" as an attribute to the link in every case (it is done easily by modifying the header links template). Is there something else I should be doing? Do I need to try to add canonical to the login page? If so, does anyone know how to do it using XML?
Moz Pro | | kdl01 -
Can I exclude pages from my Crawl Diagnostics?
Right now my crawl diagnostic information is being skewed because it's including the onsite search from my website. Is there a way to remove certain pages like search from the errors and warnings of the crawl diagnostic? My search pages are coming up as: Long URL Title Element Too Long Missing Meta Description Blocked by meta-robots (Which is how I want it) Rel Canonical Here is what the crawl diagnostic thinks my page URL looks like: website.com/search/gutter%25252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525 252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252 525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525 252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252 52525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252Bcleaning/ Thank you, Jonathan
Moz Pro | | JonathanGoodman0 -
What the hell...spam on SEOMOZ!
I received this in my Private Messages section: My name is Fatima,i saw your profile at/www.seomoz.org/today and became intrested in you,i will also like to know you the more,and i want you to send an email to my email address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom i am.Here is my email address (fatimababy06@yahoo.com) I believe we can move from here I am waiting for your mail to my email address above.Fatima(Remeber the distance or colour does not matter but love matters alot in life) How can somebody spam like this on protected forum?
Moz Pro | | IM_Learner2