URLs: Removing duplicate pages using anchor?
-
I've been working on removing duplicate content on our website. There are tons of pages created based on size but the content is the same.
The solution was to create a page with 90% static content and 10% dynamic, that changed depending on the "size" Users can select the size from a dropdown box.
So instead of 10 URLs, I now have one URL.
- Users can access a specific size by adding an anchor to the end of the URL (?f=suze1, ?f=size2)
For e.g:
Old URLs.
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size2
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size3
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size4
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size5
New URLs
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size2
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size3
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size4
- www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size5
Do search engines read the anchor or drop them? Will the rank juice be transfered to just www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?
-
Thanks Everett,
- Rel="canonical" is in place, so that's covered
- The urls with the parameter are only accessible if you want to directly access a particular size. If you are on the default page and switch sizes from the dropdown, no URL change is presented.
- I have left webmaster to decide what should be crawled or not. The parameter has been mentioned though.
-
Cyto,
The Google Webmaster Tools parameter handling, in my opinion, is often best left up to Google. In other words, I rarely change it. Instead, I try to fix the issue itself. In your case, here is what I would advise:
Instead of using a parameter in the URL, use cookies or hidden divs to change the content on the page to the different size. Have a look at most major online retailers. You can select a size or color from the drop down and it never changes the URL.
If this is not possible, I recommend the following:
Ensure the rel = "canonical" tag on all of those pages references the canonical version (e.g. /product-alpha-size1) which will consolidate the link-related metrics like PageRank into the one page.
-
Please say YES
-
Thank you Celilcan2,
- I'll set it up as 'yes' and it 'narrows' the page
- What is the perk of doing this though? Will Google not count anything after the parameter as something or value, it would focus on just the single URL?
-
Go to google webmaster tools
- On the Dashboard, under Crawl, click URL Parameters.
- Next to the parameter you want, click Edit. (If the parameter isn’t listed, click Add parameter. Note that this tool is case sensitive, so be sure to type your parameter exactly as it appears in your URL.)
- If the parameter doesn't affect the content displayed to the user, select **No ... **in the Does this parameter change... list, and then click Save. If the parameter does affect the display of content, click Yes: Changes, reorders, or narrows page content, and then select how you want Google to crawl URLs with this parameter.
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
-
Removing dates from wordpress blog URL
Hi all, Ours is website's blog is built with wordpress. We used to have the below URL pattern like may other websites: www.website.com/blog/2016/04/10/topic-on-how-to-optimise-blog. Recently we removed the date and made the URL pattern to just like: www.website.com/blog/topic-on-how-to-optimise-blog All the links have been generated with new URLs across the blog. Still all the old URLs have been reported as crawl errors in search console. I am wondering will there be any auto redirect formula to redirect all the old URLs to new URLs. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Help with duplicate pages
Hi there, I have a client who's site I am currently reviewing prior to a SEO campaign. They still work with the development team who built the site (not my company). I have discovered 311 instances of duplicate content within the crawl report. The duplicate content appears to either be 1, 2, or 3 versions of the same pages but with differing URL's. Example: http://www.sitename.com http://sitename.com http://sitename.com/index.php And other pages follow a similar or same pattern. I suppose my question is mainly what could be causing this and how can I fix it? Or, is it something that will have to be fixed by the website developers? Thanks in advance Darren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODarren0 -
Removing Parameterized URLs from Google Index
We have duplicate eCommerce websites, and we are in the process of implementing cross-domain canonicals. (We can't 301 - both sites are major brands). So far, this is working well - rankings are improving dramatically in most cases. However, what we are seeing in some cases is that Google has indexed a parameterized page for the site being canonicaled (this is the site that is getting the canonical tag - the "from" page). When this happens, both sites are being ranked, and the parameterized page appears to be blocking the canonical. The question is, how do I remove canonicaled pages from Google's index? If Google doesn't crawl the page in question, it never sees the canonical tag, and we still have duplicate content. Example: A. www.domain2.com/productname.cfm%3FclickSource%3DXSELL_PR is ranked at #35, and B. www.domain1.com/productname.cfm is ranked at #12. (yes, I know that upper case is bad. We fixed that too.) Page A has the canonical tag, but page B's rank didn't improve. I know that there are no guarantees that it will improve, but I am seeing a pattern. Page A appears to be preventing Google from passing link juice via canonical. If Google doesn't crawl Page A, it can't see the rel=canonical tag. We likely have thousands of pages like this. Any ideas? Does it make sense to block the "clicksource" parameter in GWT? That kind of scares me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Duplicate content - how to diagnose duplicate content from another domain before publishing pages?
Hi, 🙂 My company is having new distributor contract, and we are starting to sell products on our own webshop. Bio-technology is an industry in question and over 1.000 products. Writing product description from scratch would take many hours. The plan is to re-write it. With permission from our contractors we will import their 'product description' on our webshop. But, I am concerned being penalies from Google for duplicate content. If we re-write it we should be fine i guess. But, how can we be sure? Is there any good tool for comparing only text (because i don't want to publish the pages to compare URLs)? What else should we be aware off beside checking 'product description' for duplicate content? Duplicate content is big issue for all of us, i hope this answers will be helpful for many of us. Keep it hard work and thank you very much for your answers, Cheers, Dusan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chemometec0 -
Blog tags are creating excessive duplicate content...should we use rel canonicals or 301 redirects?
We are having an issue with our cilent's blog creating excessive duplicate content via blog tags. The duplicate webpages from tags offer absolutely no value (we can't even see the tag). Should we just 301 redirect the tagged page or use a rel canonical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications0 -
Google Webmaster Remove URL Tool
Hi All, To keep this example simple.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
You have a home page. The home page links to 4 pages (P1, P2, P3, P4). ** Home page**
P1 P2 P3 P4 You now use Google Webmaster removal tool to remove P4 webpage and cache instance. 24 hours later you check and see P4 has completely disappeared. You now remove the link from the home page pointing to P4. My Question
Does Google now see only pages P1, P2 & P3 and therefore allocate link juice at a rate of 33.33% each. Regards Mark0 -
ALT Tag Labels that Use Near Duplicate Text-SEO No, No???
Greetings Moz Community: About 280 pages of my 650 page commercial real estate website are listing pages. Each listing page contains between two and five photos, each with a corresponding ALT tag. My developer has set up the labeling of the ALT tags in the following manner. I can create a label for the first photo, but each subsequent photo automatically gets the same label plus a number tagged to the ALT. Like this: alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 0"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 1"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 2"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 3" Is this method neutral, positive or negative for SEO? I am concerned that this manner of labeling ALT tags might risk triggering a duplicate content penalty. In early July I migrated the site from Drupal to Wordpress. We changed the URL structure (adding a sub-directory) for the listings at that time. Google is refusing to index about 100 listing pages. Any chance the ALT tags are contributing to Google's reluctance to index the URLs? I might also add that images are hosted on Amazon's CDN. A sample listing URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/278-21st-street-flatiron-loft-for-rent
Note: (/listings/278) were added to the URL in July, representing the listing sub directory plus the listing number. I Look forward to hearing the opinion of the MOZ community!!! THANKS!!!
Alan1 -
Wordpresss Bug? Duplicate pages yet again, Adviced Needed
I have work up this morning with a large number of missing meta description, when I looked at th pages (knowing I have to missing metas) I have duplicates of my pages that look like this, These pages normally look like www.finalduties.co.uk/ NAME OF POST now i have urls with numbers in, seems as though all my blog posts have duplicated.. Now could this be down to a wordpress bug? I am so fed up, I had all my errors all cleared up only to wake and have pages like this, which is going to cause me a problem because my pages are now duplicating.. please help, advice needed from someone that knows wordpress? | Father and son battle over 13th century inheritance http://www.finalduties.co.uk/?p=1006 1 0 Court of Appeal rules against RSCPA http://www.finalduties.co.uk/?p=1007 1 0 Life insurance policy payout can skip probate process http://www.finalduties.co.uk/?p=1008 1 0 Government clamping down on inheritance tax avoidance http://www.finalduties.co.uk/?p=1010 |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris__Chris0