Could you use a robots.txt file to disalow a duplicate content page from being crawled?
-
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?
-
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
-
Peter, Thanks for the clarification.
-
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).
-
Next time I'll read the reference links better
Thank you!
-
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." -
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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)
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
-
Possible duplicate content issues on same page with urls to multiple tabs?
Hello everyone! I'm first time here, and glad to be part of Moz community! Jumping right into the question I have. For a type of pages we have on our website, there are multiple tabs on each page. To give an example, let's say a page is for the information about a place called "Ladakh". Now the various urls that the page is accessible from, can take the form of: mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/ mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/photos/ mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/places-to-visit/ and so on. To keep the UX smooth when the user switches from one tab to another, we load everything in advance with AJAX but it remains hidden till the user switches to the required tab. Now since the content is actually there in the html, does Google count it as duplicate content? I'm afraid this might be the case as when I Google for a text that's visible only on one of the tabs, I still see all tabs in Google results. I also see internal links on GSC to say a page mywanderlust.in/questions which is only supposed to be linked from one tab, but GSC telling internal links to this page (mywanderlust.in/questions) from all those 3 tabs. Also, Moz Pro crawl reports informed me about duplicate content issues, although surprisingly it says the issue exists only on a small fraction of our indexable pages. Is it hurting our SEO? Any suggestions on how we could handle the url structure better to make it optimal for indexing. FWIW, we're using a fully responsive design with the displayed content being exactly same for both desktop and mobile web. Thanks a ton in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atulgoyal0 -
Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google
I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Duplicate Content... Really?
Hi all, My site is www.actronics.eu Moz reports virtually every product page as duplicate content, flagged as HIGH PRIORITY!. I know why. Moz classes a page as duplicate if >95% content/code similar. There's very little I can do about this as although our products are different, the content is very similar, albeit a few part numbers and vehicle make/model. Here's an example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowoody
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/audi-a4-8d-b5-1994-2000-abs-ecu-en/bosch-5-3
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/bmw-3-series-e36-1990-1998-abs-ecu-en/ate-34-51 Now, multiply this by ~2,000 products X 7 different languages and you'll see we have a big dupe content issue (according to Moz's Crawl Diagnostics report). I say "according to Moz..." as I do not know if this is actually an issue for Google? 90% of our products pages rank, albeit some much better than others? So what is the solution? We're not trying to deceive Google in any way so it would seem unfair to be hit with a dupe content penalty, this is a legit dilemma where our product differ by as little as a part number. One ugly solution would be to remove header / sidebar / footer on our product pages as I've demonstrated here - http://woodberry.me.uk/test-page2-minimal-v2.html since this removes A LOT of page bloat (code) and would bring the page difference down to 80% duplicate.
(This is the tool I'm using for checking http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php) Other "prettier" solutions would greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks,
Woody 🙂1 -
Noindex Valuable duplicate content?
How could duplicate content be valuable and why question no indexing it? My new client has a clever african safari route builder that you can use to plan your safari. The result is 100's of pages that have different routes. Each page inevitably has overlapping content / destination descriptions. see link examples. To the point - I think it is foolish to noindex something like this. But is Google's algo sophisticated enough to not get triggered by something like this? http://isafari.nathab.com/routes/ultimate-tanzania-kenya-uganda-safari-july-november
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman
http://isafari.nathab.com/routes/ultimate-tanzania-kenya-uganda-safari-december-june0 -
Robot.txt File Not Appearing, but seems to be working?
Hi Mozzers, I am conducting a site audit for a client, and I am confused with what they are doing with their robot.txt file. It shows in GWT that there is a file and it is blocking about 12K URLs (image attached). It also shows in GWT that the file was downloaded 10 hours ago successfully. However, when I go to the robot.txt file link, the page is blank. Would they be doing something advanced to be blocking URLs to hide it it from users? It appears to correctly be blocking log-ins, but I would like to know for sure that it is working correctly. Any advice on this would be most appreciated. Thanks! Jared ihgNxN7
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | J-Banz0 -
Duplicate content on sites from different countries
Hi, we have a client who currently has a lot of duplicate content with their UK and US website. Both websites are geographically targeted (via google webmaster tools) to their specific location and have the appropriate local domain extension. Is having duplicate content a major issue, since they are in two different countries and geographic regions of the world? Any statement from Google about this? Regards, Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
Why are these pages considered duplicate content?
I have a duplicate content warning in our PRO account (well several really) but I can't figure out WHY these pages are considered duplicate content. They have different H1 headers, different sidebar links, and while a couple are relatively scant as far as content (so I might believe those could be seen as duplicate), the others seem to have a substantial amount of content that is different. It is a little perplexing. Can anyone help me figure this out? Here are some of the pages that are showing as duplicate: http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Seth+Green/?bioid=5554 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Solomon+Northup/?bioid=11758 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/?mediatype=audio+books&bioid=3665 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Marcus+Rediker/?bioid=10145 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Robin+Miles/?bioid=2075
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DownPour0 -
All page files in root? Or to use directories?
We have thousands of pages on our website; news articles, forum topics, download pages... etc - and at present they all reside in the root of the domain /. For example: /aosta-valley-i6816.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html We are considering moving over to a new URL system where we use directories. For example, the above URLs would be the following: /images/aosta-valley-i6816.html
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/forums/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html Would we have any benefit in using directories for SEO purposes? Would our current system perhaps mean too many files in the root / flagging as spammy? Would it be even better to use the following system which removes file endings completely and suggests each page is a directory: /images/aosta-valley/6816/
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde/1101/
/forums/what-is-best-addon/3360/ If so, what would be better: /images/aosta-valley/6816/ or /images/6816/aosta-valley/ Just looking for some clarity to our problem! Thank you for your help guys!0