Duplicate Content & Rel Canonical Tag not working
-
I'm really questioning the legitimacy of the duplicate content flags with moz. I'm building a website that sells home decor products and a lot of the pages are similar in structure (As would be expected with a store that sells thousands of individual products). It seems a little overkill to me to flag the following pages as duplicate content. They have different urls, titles, h1, h2, and h3 tages, different meta tags, etc. Right now, it's saying that the following have duplicate page content:
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/pillows/christmas-vacation-embroidered-pillow
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/throws/camo-bear-throw
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/teapots/wonderland-teapot
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/cambridge-rug-36x60
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king%2C-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/redmon-rag-rug-36x60
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/valances/hearthside-valance-72x14
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/valances/hearthside-valance-72x14
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king,-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/teapots/wonderland-teapot
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/throws/camo-bear-throw
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/accessories/home-place-tumbler
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king,-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/cambridge-rug-36x60
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/pillows/christmas-vacation-embroidered-pillow
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king%2C-woodland?pi=18
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/donna-sharp/lodge-quilts/king%2C-woodland
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/accessories/home-place-tumbler
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/park-designs/rag-rugs/redmon-rag-rug-36x6Any ideas?
Also, it seems like it's not honoring the rel-canonical tag. It keeps saying that pages with a rel canonical tag are duplicates when some of the urls that it's flagging shouldn't even be indexed because of the canonical tag. The "pi" in the query string should not be indexed!
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=3
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=6
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=7
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=6
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=10
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=8
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=8
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=7
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=7
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=1
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=8
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=5
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=10
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=3
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=5
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=4
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=9
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-%26-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=1
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=6
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=1
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=5
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=2
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=9
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=4
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=3
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-%26-quilts/shams/standard-shams
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-%26-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=9
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=10
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?pi=18&page=2
http://countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=2
http://www.countryporchhomedecor.com/bedding-&-quilts/shams/standard-shams?page=4 -
No problem! Yes, same is true for HTTP and HTTPS
-
Is is the same way with https and non https pages? Should only one of those be accessible per page?
-
Ok thank you!
-
That is correct, you should be using rel=next/prev for markup on paginated sections. But after noticing the www and non-www issue, I don't think your problem is related to canonicals or prev/next.
Regardless of what you're doing with canonical tags or prev/next, you pages should never be accessible at both www and non-www versions. You're going to be at a duplicate content risk as long as both versions exist.
-
Thank you very much for your response! On the paginated pages I don't think you're supposed to use the canonical tag. Instead you're supposed to use the next/prev tag which is what I did. the next/prev tag points only to pages without query string values and those are the pages that are supposed to be indexed. So there shouldn't be individual pages that are separated by query string values right? They should all use non query string value pages.
Even though I do have both www and non www pages accessible, on all of the pages, I am either using the canonical tag or the next/prev tag on paginated pages. Shouldn't that tell search engines which to index??
-
Hi,
Regarding the first set of URLs: I took a look at a handful of those URLs, and it's entirely possible that you're getting duplicate notices on those. Rogerbot flags any 2 pages as duplicates if the source code of those URLs matches at 90% or more. So it's not identical, but not different enough that search engines can discern. Most of the products you've listed there have no content, or a very small amount, meaning that when you consider the rest of the code involved with that page, it mostly matches the homepage.
Regarding the second set: I ran those URLs through Screaming Frog and don't see any canonical tags. Keep in mind, just because URLs aren't indexed in search engines, doesn't mean Rogerbot doesn't have access to them.
*Update - on further digging, I think I found the source of all of your duplicate issues. Both www and non-www versions of your URLs are accessible. One of them should redirect to the other, doesn't matter which, but both should not render.
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
-
Canonical tag on webstore products to avoid Duplicate Page Content ?
Hi, I would like to have an opinion on what how we are planning to solve the issue with Duplicate Page Contents that MOZ PRO is showing us. MOZ Pro is showing us a lot of pages with duplicate content as High Priority Issue. Mainly the problem is with products which have very few differences between them, e.g. pink bike model X and red bike model X. So we decided to implement a canonical tag on these products, and the pink bike model X will now have a canonical pointing to the red bike model X. So hopefully we will be ranking higher with our red bike model X and our pink bike model X will disapear from the index. Am I right ? Is it a good practice, since we will loose long tails indexes? I check each canonical in the Search Console, and we have extremely few searched for "pink bike model X" most of searches are "bike model X". Thank you in advance for your opinion. Isabelle
Moz Pro | | isabelledylag0 -
Moz shows duplicate content, but URL's are tagged with campaign tags
Crawl diagnostics shows a lot of pages with duplicate content, but when I check the details, I see that it lists the same page but the url contains a campaign tag, so it's not really another page that is serving identical content... Is there a way to remove these pages out of the Crawl Diagnostics?
Moz Pro | | jorisbrabants0 -
Special Characters in URL & Google Search Engine (Index & Crawl)
G'd everyone, I need help with understanding how special characters impact SEO. Eg. é , ë ô in words Does anyone have good insights or reference material regarding the treatment of Special Characters by Google Search Engine? how Page Title / Meta Desc with Special Chars are being index & Crawl Best Practices when it comes to URLs - uses of Unicode, HTML entity references - when are where? any disadvantage using special characters Does special characters in URL have any impact on SEO performance & User search, experience. Thanks heaps, Amy
Moz Pro | | LabeliumUSA0 -
A 301 redirect to a page with a rel canonical to a page with a 301 question...
MOZ registers thousands of DC and Duplicate titles on a Drupal site which has a little strange setup. Example: www.1234.com/en-us 301 redirects to www.realsite.com/en-us which has a rel canonical to www.1234.com which 301 redirects to www.realsite.com. If you're still with me I thank you.
Moz Pro | | Crunchii
My question is since MOZ registers errors, if indeed the rel canonical isn't recognized due to a 301 redirect?0 -
Title Missing or Empty - has title tag's
In seomoz pro this page shows the error - "Title Missing or Empty", but has a tag. I'm trying to figure out if it's an issue on my end or a bug in the mozpro system. Thanks!! http://www.65broadwaydental.com/Contact.aspx
Moz Pro | | MusicNerd0 -
Wordpress tag problem
Hei, Just start using seomoz pro and it's freaking awesome:) I have one question about Crawl Diagnostics and hope you guys can help me out. I just launch my website and i get two errors what greep me out a bit. I don't know how to handle them correctly. I have two duplicate content errors what are caused by Wordpress tag's. If i make more blog posts then i get even more duplicate content issues. how should i handle this "tag" situation? Respectfully, TauriU
Moz Pro | | TauriU0 -
Do crawl reports see canonical tags?
Greetings, I just redesigned my site, www.funderstanding.com, and have the old site pointing to the new site via canonical URLs. I had a new crawl test run and it showed a large amount of duplicate content. Does the SEO Moz crawl tool validate canonical urls and adjusts the duplicate content count or is this note considered? FYI, I sent from no duplicate content to having 865 errors since the redesign went up so that seems suspicious. I would think though that assuming the canonical tag were used properly, and I hope it is?, that this would not be a problem?? All help with this is most appreciated. Eric
Moz Pro | | Ericc220 -
"Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but these pages are noindex
Hello guys, our site is nearly perfect - according to SEOmoz campaign overview. But, it shows me 5200 Errors, more then 2500 Pages with Duplicate Content plus more then 2500 Duplicated Page Titles. All these pages are sites to edit profiles. So I set them "noindex, follow" with meta robots. It works pretty good, these pages aren't indexed in the search engines. But why the SEOmoz tools list them as errors? Is there a good reason for it? Or is this just a little bug with the toolset? The URLs which are listet as duplicated are http://www.rimondo.com/horse-edit/?id=1007 (edit the IDs to see more...) http://www.rimondo.com/movie-edit/?id=10653 (edit the IDs to see more...) The crawling picture is still running, so maybe the errors will be gone away in some time...? Kind regards
Moz Pro | | mdoegel0