WMT Showing Duplicate Meta Description Issues Altough Posts Were Redirected
-
Dear Moz Community,
Some time ago we've change the structure of our website and we've redirected the old URL's to the new ones. About 2,000 posts were redirected at that time.
While checking Webmaster Tools a few days ago I've discovered that about 500 duplicate meta-description issues appear in the "HTML Improvements" area. To my surprise, altough the old posts were redirected to the new path, WMT sees the description of the old posts similar with the one of the new post. Moreover, after changing the structure all meta-descriptions were modified and they weren't the same used before the restructure.
For example I've redirected /blog/taxi-transfer-from-merton-sw19-to-london-city-airport/ to /destinations/greater-london/merton-sw19/taxi-transfer-to-london-city-airport-from-merton/
Now they are shown as having duplicate content. I've checked the redirects and they are working.
I get the same error from the redirected pages for about 150 titles.
Did anyone else get this errors or can you please offer me some suggestions about how I can fix this?
Thank you in advance!
Tiberiu
-
Yes - assuming this is the final/good page, you have it canonical link to itself.
See #5 on this post by DP
http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
-
Dear CleverPHD,
Thank you for your answer. Your advice sounds pretty good but let me see if I got your suggestion clearly. So, from what I understand, you are saying that for the page www.example.com**/blog/taxi-transfer-from-merton-sw19-to-london-city-airport/ **I should add the following as the rel canonical?
Thank you once again!
Best regards,
Tiberiu
-
I have seen this exact issue before in GWT on a site I work with. It is annoying, but does look to happen on larger sites. Here is what we did to fix our issue. This assumes you already have the proper 301 redirects in place.
-
Add the canonical link to self on all the new pages
-
Wait for Google bot to spider them
-
Wait for GWT to update the status in the report
It is not a quick fix as it takes a while for steps 2 & 3 to cycle though as not all pages are spidered at the same rate. it may take you several months to see it all work itself out.
On this same site, I now also see if I have a new post that I then change the URL and add a 301 that GWT goes through this same process. Again, it is really annoying as I have the 301 in place, I have sent a clear directive to Google that the new page is replacing the old and they show the duplicate error for the old and new URLs in GWT.
I cannot see any logic in why this happens and why the report shows the way that it does. My best guess is that GWT is doing some batch processing and the sequence is off on what is looked at when and so this is a side effect of that process. It is like the spider first sees the new and old URLs from the 301 and logs both URLs. What should happen next is the next batch process should account for the 301 redirects and take out the old URLs, instead the process to check duplicate titles and descriptions runs and generates the duplicate report before the 301 cleanup process can get to it. Disclaimer, I am not a developer etc, but just trying to guess at the logic of "why".
If anyone else has any insight on why this happens, I would love to hear it. I have been able to "fix" the issue using the steps above, but it was in reality not broken to start with. It works out as one of the Moz rx is to use self canonicalizing links to help with scrapers, parameters etc. I just wish GWT was more useful in this sense as I have to sort out all the "errors" to get to the real issues. I end up having to use the Moz crawl or Screaming Frog etc to get at this information.
-
-
Tiberiu,
So google WMT is giving these errors? I've had this in the past with a site of a client. Issues were long solved and still Google WMT gives these errors. What does moz.com campaign say? Do the same errors occur here? It could well be a glitch of bug in Google WMT.
Regards
Jarno
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
-
A grade optimised posts not showing in SERPs
Hi all, I've been using Moz to research, optimise and grade a broad range of copy and blog posts over the years. After the optimisation process I've always seen a relatively quick improvement of pages/posts in SERPs. I am currently working on a new website launched earlier in the year on a subdomain. There's a sitemap, fresh content added every month and the site has an verified Google Analytics and Search Console account. The content is quite niche with low traffic data for related terms, however, I am finding that after three or four weeks the optimised posts aren't displaying in the top 50 results in Google. These are the posts: https://sykeshome.europe.sykes.com/cut-the-cost-of-customer-support-use-a-work-at-home-model/ - optimised for "Cut the cost of customer support" (and also "Cut the cost of customer support: use a work-at-home model") https://sykeshome.europe.sykes.com/quality-and-compliance-in-a-work-at-home-environment/ - optimised for "Quality and compliance" (and also "Quality and compliance in a work-at-home environment") As a new website launched on a subdomain there aren't currently any inbound links, but I wanted to know if I am simply being impatient in expecting the above posts to rank higher (if only slightly), or if there could be a reason optimised content with a Moz A grade isn't showing in the first 50 results. Any advice or pointers would be much appreciated. Jonathan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCN-SBWD0 -
Galleries and duplicate content
Hi! I am now studing a website, and I have detected that they are maybe generating duplicate content because of image galleries. When they want to show details of some of their products, they link to a gallery url
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
something like this www.domain.com/en/gallery/slide/101 where you can find the logotype, a full image and a small description. There is a next and a prev button over the slider. The next goes to the next picture www.domain.com/en/gallery/slide/102 and so on. But the next picture is in a different URL!!!! The problem is that they are generating lots of urls with very thin content inside.
The pictures have very good resolution, and they are perfect for google images searchers, so we don't want to use the noindex tag. I thought that maybe it would be best to work with a single url with the whole gallery inside it (for example, the 6 pictures working with a slideshow in the same url ), but as the pictures are very big, the page weight would be greater than 7 Mb. If we keep the pictures working that way (different urls per picture), we will be generating duplicate content each time they want to create a gallery. What is your recommendation? Thank you!0 -
Login required pages that redirect back to the post
Hi, Login required pages that redirect back to the post get the same description Example http://www.Somesite.com/modal/register?destination=post title Every post when a non member sees it has links that are as above post title is the only difference in the URL's So these Meta descriptions 1,000's of them are same. What can we do Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Worpress Redirect
I am migrating a WP site from one domain to another for a client. WP is installed at the root. Typically I would simply issue a 301-redirect for the entire domain, however, in this case, the client wants the content in 2 specific subfolders to remain live on the old site and have everything else redirected. Example: olddomain.com/subfolder-1/ olddomain.com/subfolder-2/ Question: what would the the htaccess code look like to pull this off? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCW0 -
Redirect 301
Hi, I `m redirecting some pages in htaccess The first 15 pages that i redirected it worked. But the last 3 dont work, and i cant figure it out why it is not working. Redirect 301 /analyseverktoy/ /webanalyse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SGacic
Redirect 301 /index.php/ledige-stillinger/ /
Redirect 301 /?page_id=352/ / Anu suggestions?0 -
Confusing 301 / Canonical Redirect Issue - Wizard Needed
I had two pages on my site with identical content. What I did was 301 redirect one page to the other. I also added canonical redirect code to the page that held the 301 code. Here is what I have: www.careersinmusic.com/music-colleges.aspx - this page was a duplicate and I needed it to resolve to:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 4Buck
www.careersinmusic.com/music-schools.aspx Here is the code I used: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX music-colleges.aspx
<%@ Page Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="music-colleges.aspx.vb" Inherits="music_colleges" %>
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> http://www.careersinmusic.com/music-schools.aspx"/> XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
music-colleges.aspx.vb
Partial Class music_colleges
Inherits System.Web.UI.Page
Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader("Location", "http://www.careersinmusic.com/music-schools.aspx")
End Sub
End Class XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The problem:
For some reason, when the search “music colleges” is done in Google, I am #7. When the term “music schools” is done, I am around 119. I MUST be getting a penalty for some reason, I just cannot figure the reason. When perform well for one term and terrible for the next? All I can come up with is a duplicate content penalty or something along those lines. Also, music-colleges.aspx seems to still be in Googles index, even though the above 301 happened months ago. Thoughts? site:www.careersinmusic.com/music-colleges.aspx Any insight into this would be GREATLY appreciated. Many Thanks!0 -
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 -
How to Redirect
What is the htaccess code to redirect everything in a directory to a file? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tylerfraser0