Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Could you use a robots.txt file to disalow a duplicate content page from being crawled?

    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.

    Could you use a robots.txt file to disalow a duplicate content page from being crawled?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    11
    2875
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • gregelwell
      gregelwell last edited by

      A website has duplicate content pages to make it easier for users to find the information from a couple spots in the site navigation. Site owner would like to keep it this way without hurting SEO.

      I've thought of using the robots.txt file to disallow search engines from crawling one of the pages. Would you think this is a workable/acceptable solution?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • KyleChamp
        KyleChamp @gregelwell last edited by

        Yeah, sorry for the confusion. I put the tag on all the pages (Original and Duplicate). I sent you a PM with another good article on Rel canonical tag

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • gregelwell
          gregelwell @Dr-Pete last edited by

          Peter, Thanks for the clarification.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Dr-Pete
            Dr-Pete Staff @anthonytjm last edited by

            Generally agree, although I'd just add that Robots.txt also isn't so great at removing content that's already been indexed (it's better at prevention). So, I find that it's not just not ideal - it sometimes doesn't even work in these cases.

            Rel-canonical is generally a good bet, and it should go on the duplicate (you can actually put it on both, although it's not necessary).

            gregelwell 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • gregelwell
              gregelwell @gregelwell last edited by

              Next time I'll read the reference links better 🙂

              Thank you!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • anthonytjm
                anthonytjm @gregelwell last edited by

                per google webmaster tools:

                If Google knows that these pages have the same content, we may index only one version for our search results. Our algorithms select the page we think best answers the user's query. Now, however, users can specify a canonical page to search engines by adding a element with the attribute rel="canonical" to the section of the non-canonical version of the page. Adding this link and attribute lets site owners identify sets of identical content and suggest to Google: "Of all these pages with identical content, this page is the most useful. Please prioritize it in search results."

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • gregelwell
                  gregelwell @KyleChamp last edited by

                  Thanks Kyle. Anthony had a similar view on using the rel canonical tag. I'm just curious about adding it to both the original page or duplicate page? Or both?

                  Thanks,

                  Greg

                  KyleChamp 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • gregelwell
                    gregelwell @anthonytjm last edited by

                    Anthony, Thanks for your response. See Kyle, he also felt using the rel canonical tag was the best thing to do. However he seemed to think you'd put it on the original page - the one you want to rank for. And you're suggesting putting on the duplicate page. Should it be added to both while specifying which page is the 'original'?

                    Thanks!

                    Greg

                    anthonytjm gregelwell 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Adam.Whittles
                      Adam.Whittles last edited by

                      I'm not sure I understand why the site owner seems to think that the duplicate content is necessary?

                      If I was in your situation I would be trying to convince the client to remove the duplicate content from their site, rather than trying to find a way around it.

                      If the information is difficult to find then this may be due to a problem with the site architecture. If the site does not flow well enough for visitors to find the information they need, then perhaps a site redesign is necessary.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • anthonytjm
                        anthonytjm last edited by

                        Well, the answer would be yes and no. A robots.txt file would stop the bots from indexing the page, but links from other pages in site to that non indexed page could therefor make it crawlable and then indexed. AS posted in google webmaster tools here:

                        "You need a robots.txt file only if your site includes content that you don't want search engines to index. If you want search engines to index everything in your site, you don't need a robots.txt file (not even an empty one).

                        While Google won't crawl or index the content of pages blocked by robots.txt, we may still index the URLs if we find them on other pages on the web. As a result, the URL of the page and, potentially, other publicly available information such as anchor text in links to the site, or the title from the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org), can appear in Google search results."

                        I think the best way to avoid any conflict is applying the rel="canonical"  tag to each duplicate page that you don't want indexed.

                        You can find more info on rel canonical here

                        Hope this helps out some.

                        gregelwell Dr-Pete 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • KyleChamp
                          KyleChamp last edited by

                          The best way would be to use the Rel canonical tag

                          On the page you would like to rank for put the Rel canonical tag in

                          This lets google know that this is the original page.

                          Check out this link posted by Rand about the Rel canonical tag [http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps)

                          gregelwell 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                          • 1 / 1
                          • First post
                            Last post

                          Got a burning SEO question?

                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                          Start my free trial


                          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.

                          • See all categories

                          Related Questions

                          • AspenFasteners

                            What happens to crawled URLs subsequently blocked by robots.txt?

                            We have a very large store with 278,146 individual product pages. Since these are all various sizes and packaging quantities of less than 200 product categories my feeling is that Google would be better off making sure our category pages are indexed. I would like to block all product pages via robots.txt until we are sure all category pages are indexed, then unblock them. Our product pages rarely change, no ratings or product reviews so there is little reason for a search engine to revisit a product page. The sales team is afraid blocking a previously indexed product page will result in in it being removed from the Google index and would prefer to submit the categories by hand, 10 per day via requested crawling. Which is the better practice?

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AspenFasteners
                            1
                          • EdenPrez

                            Will I be flagged for duplicate content by Google?

                            Hi Moz community, Had a question regarding duplicate content that I can't seem to find the answer to on Google. My agency is working on a large number of franchisee websites (over 40) for one client, a print franchise, that wants a refresh of new copy and SEO. Each print shop has their own 'microsite', though all services and products are the same, the only difference being the location. Each microsite has its own unique domain. To avoid writing the same content over and over in 40+ variations, would all the websites be flagged by Google for duplicate content if we were to use the same base copy, with the only changes being to the store locations (i.e. where we mention Toronto print shop on one site may change to Kelowna print shop on another)? Since the print franchise owns all the domains, I'm wondering if that would be a problem since the sites aren't really competing with one another. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdenPrez
                            0
                          • chalet

                            Same content, different languages. Duplicate content issue? | international SEO

                            Hi, If the "content" is the same, but is written in different languages, will Google see the articles as duplicate content?
                            If google won't see it as duplicate content. What is the profit of implementing the alternate lang tag?Kind regards,Jeroen

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chalet
                            0
                          • nchlondon

                            Directory with Duplicate content? what to do?

                            Moz keeps finding loads of pages with duplicate content on my website. The problem is its a directory page to different locations. E.g if we were a clothes shop we would be listing our locations: www.sitename.com/locations/london www.sitename.com/locations/rome www.sitename.com/locations/germany The content on these pages is all the same, except for an embedded google map that shows the location of the place. The problem is that google thinks all these pages are duplicated content. Should i set a canonical link on every single page saying that www.sitename.com/locations/london is the main page? I don't know if i can use canonical links because the page content isn't identical because of the embedded map. Help would be appreciated. Thanks.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nchlondon
                            0
                          • AMHC

                            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 | | AMHC
                            0
                          • GSO

                            Should I be using meta robots tags on thank you pages with little content?

                            I'm working on a website with hundreds of thank you pages, does it make sense to no follow, no index these pages since there's little content on them? I'm thinking this should save me some crawl budget overall but is there any risk in cutting out the internal links found on the thank you pages? (These are only standard site-wide footer and navigation links.) Thanks!

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GSO
                            0
                          • khi5

                            "noindex, follow" or "robots.txt" for thin content pages

                            Does anyone have any testing evidence what is better to use for pages with thin content, yet important pages to keep on a website? I am referring to content shared across multiple websites (such as e-commerce, real estate etc). Imagine a website with 300 high quality pages indexed and 5,000 thin product type pages, which are pages that would not generate relevant search traffic. Question goes: Does the interlinking value achieved by "noindex, follow" outweigh the negative of Google having to crawl all those "noindex" pages? With robots.txt one has Google's crawling focus on just the important pages that are indexed and that may give ranking a boost. Any experiments with insight to this would be great. I do get the story about "make the pages unique", "get customer reviews and comments" etc....but the above question is the important question here.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
                            0
                          • lcourse

                            Is it a problem to use a 301 redirect to a 404 error page, instead of serving directly a 404 page?

                            We are building URLs dynamically with apache rewrite.
                            When we detect that an URL is matching some valid patterns, we serve a script which then may detect that the combination of parameters in the URL does not exist. If this happens we produce a 301 redirect to another URL which serves a 404 error page, So my doubt is the following: Do I have to worry about not serving directly an 404, but redirecting (301) to a 404 page? Will this lead to the erroneous original URL staying longer in the google index than if I would serve directly a 404? Some context. It is a site with about 200.000 web pages and we have currently 90.000 404 errors reported in webmaster tools (even though only 600 detected last month).

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
                            0

                          Get started with Moz Pro!

                          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                          Start my free trial
                          Products
                          • Moz Pro
                          • Moz Local
                          • Moz API
                          • Moz Data
                          • STAT
                          • Product Updates
                          Moz Solutions
                          • SMB Solutions
                          • Agency Solutions
                          • Enterprise Solutions
                          Free SEO Tools
                          • Domain Authority Checker
                          • Link Explorer
                          • Keyword Explorer
                          • Competitive Research
                          • Brand Authority Checker
                          • Local Citation Checker
                          • MozBar Extension
                          • MozCast
                          Resources
                          • Blog
                          • SEO Learning Center
                          • Help Hub
                          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                          • How-to Guides
                          • Moz Academy
                          • API Docs
                          About Moz
                          • About
                          • Team
                          • Careers
                          • Contact
                          Why Moz
                          • Case Studies
                          • Testimonials
                          Get Involved
                          • Become an Affiliate
                          • MozCon
                          • Webinars
                          • Practical Marketer Series
                          • MozPod
                          Connect with us

                          Contact the Help team

                          Join our newsletter
                          Moz logo
                          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                          • Accessibility
                          • Terms of Use
                          • Privacy

                          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.