Mobile Site - Same Content, Same subdomain, Different URL - Duplicate Content?
-
I'm trying to determine the best way to handle my mobile commerce site.
I have a desktop version and a mobile version using a 3rd party product called CS-Cart.
Let's say I have a product page. The URLs are...
mobile:
store.domain.com/index.php?dispatch=categories.catalog#products.view&product_id=857desktop:
store.domain.com/two-toned-tee.htmlI've been trying to get information regarding how to handle mobile sites with different URLs in regards to duplicate content. However, most of these results have the assumption that the different URL means m.domain.com rather than the same subdomain with a different address.
I am leaning towards using a canonical URL, if possible, on the mobile store pages. I see quite a few suggesting to not do this, but again, I believe it's because they assume we are just talking about m.domain.com vs www.domain.com.
Any additional thoughts on this would be great!
-
That's an awfully interesting mobile URL =/ Ideally you should only have one URL. If that's not possible, you want to follow the same URL structure as closely as possible. If that's not possible, you'll want to add rel="alternate" on the desktop site to the corresponding mobile URL, and a canonical tag on the mobile site to the desktop site.
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details
By the way, I'd strongly suggest detecting based on screen size or width rather than user-agent wherever possible.
-
If CS-Cart doesn't work out for you, Shopgate will build you a search optimized mobile site with your current website's look and feel.
-
Have you tried doing internal URL mapping, rather than allowing two different URLs?
Do you have access to .htaccess?
First detect the mobile device and then do the internal map for that.
If you can do it, there is still only the friendly URL showing externally.
Of course, it depends how the internal system works and how pages are output, but you would just stop the search engines from accessing the internally mapped links.
-
Thank you for the response.
We do have user agent detection going, and users are redirected appropriately. It's just that I have to redirect them to a non-SEO friendly URL for the mobile store. There's nothing I can do about that. I'm thinking I just need a canonical URL tag on the mobile store pages so that Google credits the right link and not the ugly link.
I would love to be able to try something like using the same page with CSS friendly design for mobile devices, but I don't have that option in any way using this 3rd party solution.
-
You need to server up the right page to the right crawler, googlebot and googlebotmobile
You need to detect the useragent and redirecte to the correct version, this is goolges idea, i think it is a lot of work and bound to cause confusion. You can also set up a mobil sitemap, to help indicate the difference
How i have done my mobile pages is using the same page with the tag and css, this idea is much easier I believe
see this page near the botton,
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/hh553501
here is anouther example
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
-
Can I use duplicate content in different US cities without hurting SEO?
So, I have major concerns with this plan. My company has hundreds of facilities located all over the country. Each facility has it's own website. We have a third party company working to build a content strategy for us. What they came up with is to create a bank of content specific to each service line. If/when any facility offers that service, they then upload the content for that service line to that facility website. So in theory, you might have 10-12 websites all in different cities, with the same content for a service. They claim "Google is smart, it knows its content all from the same company, and because it's in different local markets, it will still rank." My contention is that duplicate content is duplicate content, and unless it is "localize" it, Google is going to prioritize one page of it and the rest will get very little exposure in the rankings no matter where you are. I could be wrong, but I want to be sure we aren't shooting ourselves in the foot with this strategy, because it is a major major undertaking and too important to go off in the wrong direction. SEO Experts, your help is genuinely appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens1 -
Internal Duplicate Content - Classifieds (Panda)
I've been wondering for a while now, how Google treats internal duplicate content within classified sites. It's quite a big issue, with customers creating their ads twice.. I'd guess to avoid the price of renewing, or perhaps to put themselves back to the top of the results. Out of 10,000 pages crawled and tested, 250 (2.5%) were duplicate adverts. Similarly, in terms of the search results pages, where the site structure allows the same advert(s) to appear under several unique URLs. A prime example would be in this example. Notice, on this page we have already filtered down to 1 result, but the left hand side filters all return that same 1 advert. Using tools like Siteliner and Moz Analytics just highlights these as urgent high priority issues, but I've always been sceptical. On a large scale, would this count as Panda food in your opinion, or does Google understand the nature of classifieds is different, and treat it as such? Appreciate thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers1 -
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 -
Will merging sites create a duplicate content penalty?
I have 2 sites that would be better suited being merged and creating a more authoritative site. Basically I'de like to merge site A in to site B. If I add new pages from site A to Site B and create 301 redirects for those pages on site A to the new pages on Site B is that the best way to go about it? As the pages are already indexed would this create any duplicate content issue or would the redirect solve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boballanjones0 -
All Thin Content removed and duplicate content replaced. But still no success?
Good morning, Over the last three months i have gone about replacing and removing all the duplicate content (1000+ page) from our site top4office.co.uk. Now it been just under 2 months since we made all the changes and we still are not showing any improvements in the SERPS. Can anyone tell me why we aren't making any progress or spot something we are not doing correctly? Another problem is that although we have removed 3000+ pages using the removal tool searching site:top4office.co.uk still shows 2800 pages indexed (before there was 3500). Look forward to your responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apogeecorp0 -
URL Parameters Duplicate Page Title
Thanks in advance, I'm getting duplicate page titles because seomoz keeps crawling through my url parameters. I added forcefiltersupdate to the URL parameters in webmaster tools but it has not seemed to have an effect. Below is an example of the duplicate content issue that I am having. http://qlineshop.com/OC/index.php?route=product/category&path=59_62&forcefiltersupdate=true&checkedfilters[]=a.13.13.387baf0199e7c9cc944fae94e96448fa Any thoughts? Thanks again. -Patrick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bamron0 -
Duplicate content for images
On SEOmoz I am getting duplicate errors for my onsite report. Unfortunately it does not specify what that content is... We are getting these errors for our photo gallery and i am assuming that the reason is some of the photos are listed in multiple categories. Can this be the problem? what else can it be? how can we resolve these issues?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Guest blogging and duplicate content
I have a guest blog prepared and several sites I can submit it to, would it be considered duplicate content if I submitted one guest blog post to multipul blogs? and if so this content is not on my site but is linking to it. What will google do? Lets say 5 blogs except the same content and post it up, I understand that the first blog to have it up will not be punished, what about the rest of the blogs? can they get punished for this duplicate content? can I get punished for having duplicate content linking to me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0