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
      • MozCon
      • 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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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. Removing duplicate content

    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.

    Removing duplicate content

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    6
    1129
    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.
    • AMHC
      AMHC last edited by

      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?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AMHC
        AMHC @RuthBurrReedy last edited by

        Where this is  appearing the most is on cross domain canonicals. We have duplicate content across 2 websites, and we've canonicaled some pages from Site A to Site B, and some from Site B to Site A. In theory, pages that were canonicaled to the other domain should be deindexed. When I run a rankings report, I see pages for the wrong domain ranking, a month later. They are pages with parameters, or old URLs that we've changed. It's like a game of whack a mole. Every time we get a page deindexed, a duplicate with a different parameter takes its place. And this is in spite of calling out these parameters in GWT.

        What I imagine is happening is that we have several URLs for the same page indexed. When Google crawls our site, it is correctly canonicaling the page it crawls. In the rankings, however, Google is probably pulling a duplicate page out of its index, and ranking it without crawling it. If it was crawling it, Google would see the canonical tag, and not rank it. So we have an ongoing battle to get Google to crawl the page it just pulled out of its index to see the the canonical tag.

        The reason for all this is that when a page cross domain canonicals correctly, the rankings for the duplicate page on the other site goes up dramatically. As long as Google keeps ranking the wrong pages, we don't get the rankings bump on the other site.

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

          Are you basing this on a site: search? It's fairly common for URLs to appear in a site: search that otherwise will not appear for any actual searches. Are the undesirable versions of the URLs getting any search traffic?

          AMHC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Linda-Vassily
            Linda-Vassily @PatrickDelehanty last edited by

            Yes, as Patrick said, surprisingly often something like this is a result of a simple oversight because we have been looking at the same code over and over...

            Do you have access to Screaming Frog? You could crawl your site and see whether redirects/canonicals are behaving as you expected.

            Have you taken a look at the html of one of the incorrectly indexed pages when it is loaded in your browser? Can you see the canonical? If you try going to a redirected page, does it redirect? [I know--way to obvious, but sometimes it is good to start at the beginning again when we can't root out an issue.]

            Another culprit in these cases can be internal links. Do you link internally using any of the undesirable URLs? That can send a message to Google that those URLs are still in play. Again, you can use Screaming Frog to find those strings.

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

              It sounds like part of the problem may be the sitemaps you're sending. By including duplicates in a sitemap, you're basically telling Google that each version of the page is valid. I would remove them and resubmit a sitemap with only the canonical versions you want indexed and see if that helps.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • PatrickDelehanty
                PatrickDelehanty last edited by

                Hi there

                Are you sure you are using all of the tools above properly? Not saying you're not but people make mistakes and it's just something to look into.

                When did you implement all of the changes? Was it recently or was it a long time ago?

                How is your organic traffic and rankings? Did you check if you have a manual action at all?

                Let me know - thanks!

                Linda-Vassily 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 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

                • allianzireland

                  Case Sensitive URLs, Duplicate Content & Link Rel Canonical

                  I have a site where URLs are case sensitive. In some cases the lowercase URL is being indexed and in others the mixed case URL is being indexed. This is leading to duplicate content issues on the site. The site is using link rel canonical to specify a preferred URL in some cases however there is no consistency whether the URLs are lowercase or mixed case. On some pages the link rel canonical tag points to the lowercase URL, on others it points to the mixed case URL. Ideally I'd like to update all link rel canonical tags and internal links throughout the site to use the lowercase URL however I'm apprehensive! My question is as follows: If I where to specify the lowercase URL across the site in addition to updating internal links to use lowercase URLs, could this have a negative impact where the mixed case URL is the one currently indexed? Hope this makes sense! Dave

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allianzireland
                  0
                • EndeR-

                  No-index pages with duplicate content?

                  Hello, I have an e-commerce website selling about 20 000 different products. For the most used of those products, I created unique high quality content. The content has been written by a professional player that describes how and why those are useful which is of huge interest to buyers. It would cost too much to write that high quality content for 20 000 different products, but we still have to sell them. Therefore, our idea was to no-index the products that only have the same copy-paste descriptions all other websites have. Do you think it's better to do that or to just let everything indexed normally since we might get search traffic from those pages? Thanks a lot for your help!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EndeR-
                  0
                • couponguy

                  Is a different location in page title, h1 title, and meta description enough to avoid Duplicate Content concern?

                  I have a dynamic website which will have location-based internal pages that will have a <title>and <h1> title, and meta description tag that will include the subregion of a city.  Each page also will have an 'info' section describing the generic product/service offered which will also include the name of the subregion.  The 'specific product/service content will be dynamic but in some cases will be almost identical--ie subregion A may sometimes have the same specific content result as subregion B.  Will the difference of just the location put in each of the above tags be enough for me to avoid a Duplicate Content concern?</p></title>

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | couponguy
                  0
                • MBASydney

                  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 | | MBASydney
                  0
                • deskstudio

                  How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content

                  I've  attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now  I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio
                  0
                • irvingw

                  Is SEOmoz.org creating duplicate content with their CDN subdomain?

                  Example URL: http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions Canonical is a RELATIVE link, should be an absolute link pointing to main domain: http://www.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions <link href='[/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions)' rel='<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>' /> 13,400 pages indexed in Google under cdn subdomain go to google   >  site:http://cdn.seomoz.org https://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&oq=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&gs_l=hp.2...986.6227.0.6258.28.14.0.0.0.5.344.3526.2-10j2.12.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.Uprw7ko7jnU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=97577626a0fb6a97&biw=1920&bih=936

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw
                  1
                • YNWA

                  Duplicate Content on Press Release?

                  Hi, We recently held a charity night in store. And had a few local celebs turn up etc... We created a press release to send out to various media outlets, within the press release were hyperlinks to our site and links on certain keywords to specific brands on our site. My question is, should we be sending a different press release to each outlet to stop the duplicate content thing, or is sending the same release out to everyone ok? We will be sending approx 20 of these out, some going online and some not. So far had one local paper website, a massive football website and a local magazine site. All pretty much same content and a few pics. Any help, hints or tips on how to go about this if I am going to be sending out to a load of other sites/blogs? Cheers

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA
                  0
                • djo-283669

                  Concerns about duplicate content issues with australian and us version of website

                  My company has an ecommerce website that's been online for about 5 years.  The url is www.betterbraces.com.  We're getting ready to launch an australian version of the website and the url will be www.betterbraces.com.au. The australian website will have the same look as the US website and will contain about 200 of the same products that are featured on the US website.  The only major difference between the two websites is the price that is charged for the products.  The australian website will be hosted on the same server as the US website. To ensure Australians don't purchase from the US site we are going to have a geo redirect in place that sends anyone with a AU ip address to the australian website. I am concerned that the australian website is going to have duplicate content issues.  However, I'm not sure if the fact that the domains are so similar coupled with the redirect will help the search engines understand that these sites are related. I would appreciate any recommendations on how to handle this situation to ensure oue rankings in the search engines aren't penalized. Thanks in advance for your help. Alison French

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djo-283669
                  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
                • Digital Marketers
                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.