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.
Duplicate content on URL trailing slash
-
Hello,
Some time ago, we accidentally made changes to our site which modified the way urls in links are generated. At once, trailing slashes were added to many urls (only in links).
Links that used to send to
example.com/webpage.htmlWere now linking to
example.com/webpage.html/Urls in the xml sitemap remained unchanged (no trailing slash).
We started noticing duplicate content (because our site renders the same page with or without the trailing shash). We corrected the problematic php url function so that now, all links on the site link to a url without trailing slash.
However, Google had time to index these pages. Is implementing 301 redirects required in this case?
-
Yes you want to have it match the canonical tag so most effective method is to 301 redirect so they match the canonical tag site map and robots.txt etc. You can use a Regex code like this at the end of the URL /?$ in the case of category URLs it will allow them when needed.
if you use the proper 301 you will not have to deal with the category issue anyway.
rel="canonical" href="https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-on-url-trailing-slash" />
I hope this is able to shed more light on the issue and great answer Eric.
Hope I was of help,
Tom
-
Hi Eric,
I was at Step 3 of your 3 Step plan, looking for confirmation as to whether or not the 301 redirects were required in this situation.
Thanks!
-
Hi yacpro13! Did Eric or Thomas answer your question, and if so, would you mind marking one or both responses as a "Good Answer?"
Otherwise, what questions do you still have?
-
If you have changed the URLs with trailing slashes, then there are a few things you'll want to do:
-
make sure all the internal links on your site are updated to point to the proper version.
-
make sure that the sitemap.xml file(s) are correct, pointing to the proper version.
-
set up 301 permanent redirects so that the ones with the slash are redirecting to the old URLs.
As long as you have corrected the links internally, updated the sitemap file, and set up the 301 redirects, everything should go "back to normal" within a fairly short period of time. You will need to give it time, though, as Google will need to re-crawl all of those URLs and get it all ironed out.
-
-
I have provided the Apache and Nginx configurations you would need in addition to a URL that will convert
Apache Htaccess to Nginx
The instructions are right here
Remove Trailing Slash
Just like with the WWW example, some prefer to remove the trailing slash. It's a commonly debated question that you'll find around the Internet, but it just depends on what you prefer.
Remember, though, your browser and even your server, by default, add a trailing slash to a directory. It is done for a reason. If you must strip the trailing slash, though, this is how you would do it:
<code class="hljs apache">RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]</code>
For Nginx
nginx configuration location ~ (.)$ { } location / { if (!-e $request_filename){ rewrite ^(.)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 redirect; } }
The explanation for this rule is the same as it is for when we want to add a trailing slash, just in reverse. We can also specify specific directories that we don't want apply this rule over.
<code class="hljs apache">RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !directory/(.*)$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]</code>
For Nginx
nginx configuration location ~ directory/(.)$ { } location ~ (.)$ { } location / { if (!-e $request_filename){ rewrite ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 redirect; } }
Please see the note about mod_dir and the
DirectorySlash
directive in the previous example. You might need to turn this directive off.HTaccess converter for Apache to Nginx configuration.
http://winginx.com/en/htaccess
https://www.maxcdn.com/one/tutorial/remove-trailing-slash/
https://www.crucialhosting.com/knowledgebase/htaccess-apache-rewrites-examples
https://moz.com/community/q/how-to-remove-trailing-slashes-in-urls-using-htaccess-apache
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
-
SEM Rush & Duplicate content
Hi SEMRush is flagging these pages as having duplicate content, but we have rel = next etc implemented: https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/bott https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/bott?page=2 Or is it being flagged as they're just really similar pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Duplicate content due to parked domains
I have a main ecommerce website with unique content and decent back links. I had few domains parked on the main website as well specific product pages. These domains had some type in traffic. Some where exact product names. So main main website www.maindomain.com had domain1.com , domain2.com parked on it. Also had domian3.com parked on www.maindomain.com/product1. This caused lot of duplicate content issues. 12 months back, all the parked domains were changed to 301 redirects. I also added all the domains to google webmaster tools. Then removed main directory from google index. Now realize few of the additional domains are indexed and causing duplicate content. My question is what other steps can I take to avoid the duplicate content for my my website 1. Provide change of address in Google search console. Is there any downside in providing change of address pointing to a website? Also domains pointing to a specific url , cannot provide change of address 2. Provide a remove page from google index request in Google search console. It is temporary and last 6 months. Even if the pages are removed from Google index, would google still see them duplicates? 3. Ask google to fetch each url under other domains and submit to google index. This would hopefully remove the urls under domain1.com and doamin2.com eventually due to 301 redirects. 4. Add canonical urls for all pages in the main site. so google will eventually remove content from doman1 and domain2.com due to canonical links. This wil take time for google to update their index 5. Point these domains elsewhere to remove duplicate contents eventually. But it will take time for google to update their index with new non duplicate content. Which of these options are best best to my issue and which ones are potentially dangerous? I would rather not to point these domains elsewhere. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ajiabs0 -
Removing duplicate content
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?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
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 | | allianzireland0 -
Magento Trailing Slash URL Problem
Howdy Mozzers! Our magento store URL's are accessible with or without a trailing slash at the end. Canonical's and 301 redirects are not set up for one of them at the moment. Will this cause duplicate issue? Do we need to set canonical or 301 up? Which one is recommended? MozAddict
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
Duplicate Content From Indexing of non- File Extension Page
Google somehow has indexed a page of mine without the .html extension. so they indexed www.samplepage.com/page, so I am showing duplicate content because Google also see's www.samplepage.com/page.html How can I force google or bing or whoever to only index and see the page including the .html extension? I know people are saying not to use the file extension on pages, but I want to, so please anybody...HELP!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebbyNabler0 -
PDF for link building - avoiding duplicate content
Hello, We've got an article that we're turning into a PDF. Both the article and the PDF will be on our site. This PDF is a good, thorough piece of content on how to choose a product. We're going to strip out all of the links to our in the article and create this PDF so that it will be good for people to reference and even print. Then we're going to do link building through outreach since people will find the article and PDF useful. My question is, how do I use rel="canonical" to make sure that the article and PDF aren't duplicate content? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
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 | | deskstudio0