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 issue with ?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=
-
Hello,
Recently, I was checking how my site content is getting indexed in Google and from today I noticed 2 links indexed on google for the same article:This is the proper link - https://techplusgame.com/hideo-kojima-not-interested-in-new-silent-hills-revival-insider-claims/
But why this URL was indexed, I don't know - https://techplusgame.com/hideo-kojima-not-interested-in-new-silent-hills-revival-insider-claims/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hideo-kojima-not-interested-in-new-silent-hills-revival-insider-claims
Could you please tell me how to solve this issue? Thank you
-
Hi @Dinsh007!
I usually exclude such pages with parameters in robots.txt file. -
We are also having the same issue with UTM tags in SERPS:
?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=some-article-title
We have canonicals in place, but google still decides to show this. It's ok - google can decide on this if the links are from respective sources... well, we can't find those sources - checked search console, searched ahrefs. nothing.
We are using RSS to feed Google Publisher Center, but it does not have RSS values for links.
We are close to disabling our global website feed to get rid of non-canonical links on SERPs. -
Thank you very much for so many solutions, I will implement it if I see any issues again and bookmarking this page also.
Regards
Dinesh Singh -
YoastSEO should do the job for Wordpress - it allows you to define the canonical page URL on each of your pages/posts:
https://yoast.com/help/canonical-urls-in-wordpress-seo/
Another option which I usually find effective which I initially skipped over is the URL parameters section in Google Search Console. You'll find it in the legacy tools section and you can set these parameters to "No: Doesn't affect page content:" which is the option for tracking code parameters:
-
Hello Paddy,
Thank you very much for your reply.
It seems that now the issue is gone but if it happens in future, then is there any Wordpress plugin to resolve this issue, instead of manually messing up with the scripts. Thank you.
-
Hi there,
This is quite a common issue and happens because technically, the addition of those parameters at the end of the URL mean that it's a new URL from Google's perspective. These kinds of parameters are very common and Google often figure it out and drop these URLs from their index and focus on the correct version. However, they don't always do this and may not do it as quickly as you'd like.
One way to deal with this is to add a rel=canonical tag to any duplicate versions of the URL and have that tag point back to the correct URL. Based on your question, this would mean that the canonical tag would look like this:
This would go into the section of this URL (and any other duplicates):
Hope that helps!
Paddy
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
-
Recurring events and duplicate content
Does anyone have tips on how to work in an event system to avoid duplicate content in regards to recurring events? How do I best utilize on-page optimization?
Technical SEO | | megan.helmer0 -
Duplicate Content Issues with Pagination
Hi Moz Community, We're an eCommerce site so we have a lot of pagination issues but we were able to fix them using the rel=next and rel=prev tags. However, our pages have an option to view 60 items or 180 items at a time. This is now causing duplicate content problems when for example page 2 of the 180 item view is the same as page 4 of the 60 item view. (URL examples below) Wondering if we should just add a canonical tag going to the the main view all page to every page in the paginated series to get ride of this issue. https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=180&p=2 https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=60&p=4 Thoughts, ideas or suggestions are welcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Duplicate Content Issue WWW and Non WWW
One of my sites got hit with duplicate content a while ago because Google seemed to be considering hhtp, https, www, and non ww versions of the site all different sites. We thought we fixed it, but for some reason https://www and just https:// are giving us duplicate content again. I can't seem to figure out why it keeps doing this. The url is https://bandsonabudget.com if any of you want to see if you can figure out why I am still having this issue.
Technical SEO | | Michael4g1 -
Is duplicate content ok if its on LinkedIn?
Hey everyone, I am doing a duplicate content check using copyscape, and realized we have used a ton of the same content on LinkedIn as our website. Should we change the LinkedIn company page to be original? Or does it matter? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a ton of duplicate content/title errors on our reports, many of them showing errors of: http://www.mysite.com/(page title) and http://mysite.com/(page title) Our site has been set up so that mysite.com 301 redirects to www.mysite.com (we did this a couple years ago). Is it possible that I set up my campaign the wrong way in SEOMoz? I'm thinking it must be a user error when I set up the campaign since we already have the 301 Redirect. Any advice is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor0 -
How to prevent duplicate content at a calendar page
Hi, I've a calender page which changes every day. The main url is
Technical SEO | | GeorgFranz
/calendar For every day, there is another url: /calendar/2012/09/12
/calendar/2012/09/13
/calendar/2012/09/14 So, if the 13th september arrives, the content of the page
/calendar/2012/09/13
will be shown at
/calendar So, it's duplicate content. What to do in this situation? a) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 301? (but the redirect changes the day after to /calendar/2012/09/14) b) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 302 (but I will loose the link juice of /calendar?) c) Add a canonical tag at /calendar (which leads to /calendar/2012/09/13) - but I will loose the power of /calendar (?) - and it will change every day... Any ideas or other suggestions? Best wishes, Georg.0 -
Duplicate Content issue
I have been asked to review an old website to an identify opportunities for increasing search engine traffic. Whilst reviewing the site I came across a strange loop. On each page there is a link to printer friendly version: http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes That page also has a link to a printer friendly version http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes&printfriendly=yes and so on and so on....... Some of these pages are being included in Google's index. I appreciate that this can't be a good thing, however, I am not 100% sure as to the extent to which it is a bad thing and the priority that should be given to getting it sorted. Just wandering what views people have on the issues this may cause?
Technical SEO | | CPLDistribution0 -
CGI Parameters: should we worry about duplicate content?
Hi, My question is directed to CGI Parameters. I was able to dig up a bit of content on this but I want to make sure I understand the concept of CGI parameters and how they can affect indexing pages. Here are two pages: No CGI parameter appended to end of the URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13japan.html CGI parameter appended to the end of the URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13japan.html?pagewanted=2&ref=homepage&src=mv Questions: Can we safely say that CGI parameters = URL parameters that append to the end of a URL? Or are they different? And given that you have rel canonical implemented correctly on your pages, search engines will move ahead and index only the URL that is specified in that tag? Thanks in advance for giving your insights. Look forward to your response. Best regards, Jackson
Technical SEO | | jackson_lo0