Joomla creating duplicate pages, then the duplicate page's canonical points to itself - help!
-
Using Joomla, every time I create an article a subsequent duplicate page is create, such as:
/latest-news/218-image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface
and
/component/content/article?id=218:image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface
The latter being the duplicate.
This wouldn't be too much of a problem, but the canonical tag on the duplicate is pointing to itself.. creating mayhem in Moz and Webmaster tools. We have hundreds of duplicates across our website and I'm very concerned with the impact this is having on our SEO!
I've tried plugins such as sh404SEF and Styleware extensions, however to no avail.
Can anyone help or know of any plugins to fix the canonicals?
-
Hi! I had the luck to talk with a joomla developer and he gave me a solution that sounds too easy for me.
The duplication is generated by the categories.
Therefore we set up all the menu items like index, follow and categories like no index no follow.
He said it works perfectly for him.
I cant believe it is so easy. I will make a trial and let you know if that solves it. -
I wasn't linking to show you an article on how to fix, I was linking to show you the article setup we use for our blog. We use one menu item per article.
For your fix, I would create a new sitemap for all the root and canonical URLs you want indexed. Then create an htaccess document that redirects the pages to the proper version. This will only allow you to visit one version.
An additional option if you are seeing the URLs show up indexed is to request a URL removal in Google webmaster tools for the duplicate versions, but this is a bit more risky. I would do this only if your blog gets a ton of hits and you don't want to place additional load on the server to process a lot of redirects per day.
Hope this helps!
-
What about when it is not coming from blogs?
For example:http://www.spain-internship.com/fr/faq/termes-et-conditions
http://www.spain-internship.com/fr/faq/termes-et-conditions/161-work-in-london-de
http://www.spain-internship.com/fr/faq/termes-et-conditions/192-home-page-sv
http://www.spain-internship.com/fr/faq/termes-et-conditions/190-home-page-nl
And like this 45 more. It makes a canonical to itself but....this is not the right solution, should point to sef one.
Let me know! By the way, cant find the right article in your page. Direct link?
-
We manually set up our blog pages. It give us the most control over every aspect. Granted it's not the fastest way to do it, but it only takes about an extra 3 minutes per post. You can view how its set up here: http://www.webdesignandcompany.com/seo-tips-for-small-business
-
This may be old but if you had a clue, it would be great to hear. Searching for a fix.
-
Has anyone else had problems with canonical tags and Joomla?
When you create an article, a duplicate page is created with the canonical pointing to itself. Therefore, having two exact pages, both claiming to be the original.
It seems to be a widespread issue but with seemingly little solutions...
Does anyone know of any plugins which may solve this? I've looked but with no luck.
Joe
-
Hi David,
Thanks for your response!
The answer to all your questions is 'Yes'.
SEF urls and url re-writing (apache using .htaccess)
And yes, blog category
Menus -> Main menu -> Latest News -> Menu item type = Category Blog
You can see an example here:
We want the first one to be right and the second to then use the first as the canonical url – i.e. as canonical is supposed to work!
Any ideas? I'm pulling my hair out over this!
-
href="http://www.scientifica.uk.com/latest-news/218-image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface" rel="canonical" />
How are your articles set up in Joomla? Do you enable URL rewriting along with SEF URLs?
Seems like you are using the blog category to quickly add in new articles, is this true?
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
-
Should the canonical tag for the redirected pages be changed
Hi! Does anyone know if the canonical tag of the old redirected page should be changed, and include the URL of the new destination? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | AnahitG0 -
Duplicate Content/Similar Pages
Hello, I'm working on our site and I'm coming into an issue with the duplicate content. Our company manufactures heavy-duty mobile lifts. We have two main lifts. They are the same, except for capacity. We want to keep the format similar and the owner of the company wants each lift to have its own dedicated page. Obviously, since the layout is the same and content is similar I'm getting the duplicate content issue. We also have a section of our accessories and a section of our parts. Each of these sections have individual pages for the accessory/part. Again, the pages are laid out in a similar fashion to keep the cohesiveness, and the content is different, however similar. Meaning different terminology, part numbers, stock numbers, etc., but the overall wording is similar. What can I do to combat these issues? I think our ratings are dropping due to the duplicate content.
Technical SEO | | slecinc0 -
Godaddy and Soft 404's
Hello, We've found that a website we manage has a list of not-found URLS in Google webmaster tools which are "soft 404's " according to Google. I went to the hosting company GoDaddy to explain and to see what they could do. As far as I can see GoDaddy's server are responding with a 200 HTTP error code - meaning that the page exists and was served properly. They have sort of disowned this as their problem. Their server is not serving up a true 404 response. This is a WordPress site. 1) Has anyone seen this problem before with GoDaddy?Is it a GoDaddy problem?2) Do you know a way to sort this issue? When I use the command site:mydomain.co.uk the number of URLs indexed is about right except for 2 or 3 "soft URLs" . So I wonder why webmaster tools report so many yet I can't see them all in the index?
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Pro's & contra's: http vs https
Hi there, We are planning to take the step and go from http to https. The main reason to do this, is to mean trustfull to our clients. And of course the rumours that it would be better for ranking (in the future). We have a large e-commerce site. A part of this site ia already HTTPS. I've read a lot of info about pro's and contra's, also this MOZ article: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
Technical SEO | | Leonie-Kramer
But i want to know some experience from others who already done this. What did you encountered when changing to HTTPS, did you had ranking drops, or loss of links etc? I want to make a list form pro's and contra's and things we have to do in advance. Thanx, Leonie0 -
Duplicate Pages on GWT when redesigning website
Hi, we recently redesigned our online shop. We have done the 301 redirects for all product pages to the new URL (and went live about 1.5 week ago), but GWT indicated that the old product URL and the new product URL are 2 different pages with the same meta title tags (duplication) - when in fact, the old URL is 301 redirecting to the new URL when visited. I found this article on google forum: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/CvCjeNOxOUw
Technical SEO | | Essentia
It says we either just wait for Google to re-crawl, of use the fetch URL function for the OLD URLs. Question is, after i fetch the OLD URL to tell Google that it's being redirected, should i click the button 'submit to index' or not? (See screengrab - please note that it was the OLD URL that was being fetched, not the NEW URL). I mean, if i click this button, is it telling Google that: a. 'This old URL has been redirected, therefore please index the new URL'? or
b. 'Please keep this old URL in your index'? What's your view on this? Thanks1 -
Does a CMS inhibit a site's crawlability?
I smell baloney but I could use a little backup from the community! My client was recently told by an SEO that search engines have a hard time getting to their site because using a CMS (like WordPress) doesn't allow "direct access to the html". Here is what they emailed my client: "Word Press (like your site is built with) and other similar “do it yourself” web builder programs and websites are not good for search engine optimization since they do not allow direct access to the HTML. Direct HTML access is needed to input important items to enhance your websites search engine visibility, performance and creditability in order to gain higher search engine rankings." Bots are blind to CMSs and html is html, correct? What do you think about the information given by the other SEO?
Technical SEO | | Adpearance0 -
What would you do if a site's entire content is on a subdomain?
Scenario: There is a website called mydomain.com and it is a new domain with about 300 inbound links (some going to the product pages and categories), but they have some high trust links The website has categories a, b, c etc but they are all on a subdomain so instead of being mydomain.com/categoryA/productname the entire site's structure looks like subdomain.mydomain.com/categoryA/productname Would you go to the effort of 301ing the subdomain urls to the correct url structure of mydomain.com/category/product name, or would you leave it as it is? Just interested as to the extent of the issues this could cause in the future and if this is something worth resolving sooner than later.
Technical SEO | | Kerry220 -
50+ duplicate content pages - Do we remove them all or 301?
We are working on a site that has 50+ pages that all have duplicate content (1 for each state, pretty much). Should we 301 all 50 of the URLs to one URL or should we just completely get rid of all the pages? Are there any steps to take when completely removing pages completely? (submit sitemap to google webmaster tools, etc) thanks!
Technical SEO | | Motava0