Duplicate content across multiple domains
-
I have come across a situation where we have discovered duplicate content between multiple domains. We have access to each domain and have recently within the past 2 weeks added a 301 redirect to redirect each page dynamically to the proper page on the desired domain.
My question relates to the removal of these pages. There are thousands of these duplicate pages.
I have gone back and looked at a number of these cached pages in google and have found that the cached pages that are roughly 30 days old or older. Will these pages ever get removed from google's index? Will the 301 redirect even be read by google to be redirected to the proper domain and page? If so when will that happen?
Are we better off submitting a full site removal request of the sites that carries the duplicate content at this point? These smaller sites do bring traffic on their own but I'd rather not wait 3 months for the content to be removed since my assumption is that this content is competing with the main site.
I suppose another option would be to include no cache meta tag for these pages.
Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.
-
I went ahead and added the links to the sitemap, however when google crawled the links I receieve this message.
When we tested a sample of URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs redirect to other locations. We recommend that your Sitemap contain URLs that point to the final destination (the redirect target) instead of redirecting to another URL.
However I do not understand how adding the redirected links to the sitemap will remove the old links.
-
Worth a shot. Crawl bots usually work by following links from page to the next. If links links no longer exist to those pages, then Google will have a tough time finding those pages and de-indexing them in favor or the correct pages.
Good luck!
-
One of the previous developers left a hole that caused this issue. The system shares code between sites.
-
Andrew,
The links were removed from the offending sites, but If I understand the gist of your suggestion Google won't remove them as quickly if they are no longer linked and yes I am using canonical tags. So I should create a sitemap with the previous links and once Google follows these links to the main site remove the sitemap. Is that your recommendation?
I suppose I can try this first before filing a request to remove the entire site.
-
Ah, I thought he was saying the dupe content does still exists but no more duplication is taking place after the fix. That's where I was going wrong then lol.
-
As long as the duplicate content pages no longer exist and you've set up the 301 redirects properly, this shouldn't be a long term problem. It can sometimes take Google a while to crawl through 1000's of pages to index the correct pages. You might want to include these pages in a Sitemap to speed up the process, particularly if there are no longer any links to these pages from anywhere else. Are you using canonical tags? They might also help point Google in the right direction.
I don't think a no cache meta tag would help. This is assuming the page will be crawled and by that point Google should follow the 301 and cace that page.
Hope this helps! Let me know how the situation progresses.
Andrew
-
Do you want the smaller sites to still exist? If they don't matter at all then you could always take them offline though that's not recommended for obvious reasons (but it would get them out of the index fairly quick).
If they still need to exist then we're just back to the same thing, changing the content on them. If the problem has been fixed to stop further duplication then that's fine... you could limit the damage by having all of those smaller sites be dupes of each other but not of the main site by rewriting the smaller ones with one lot of content, or the main one. At least that way they will only be competing with each other and not the main site any more.
Or have I still got the wrong end of the stick?
-
I am referring to an e-commerce site, so yes its dynamic. The hole has been plugged (so to speak) but the content still exists in the google cache.
-
Ah I see, so it's a CMS which pumps out content then?
But it pumps it to other sites?
-
Steve, Maybe I haven't explained the issue in enough detail. The duplicate content issue is related to a technical issue with the site causing the content to be duplicated when it should not have been. Its not a matter of rewriting content. My issue deals with purging this content from these other domains so that the main domain can be indexed with this content.
-
You could always just rewrite the content so it's not duplicate, that way you get to keep them cached and maybe focus on some different but still targeted long tail traffic... turn a negative into a positive. I accept thousands of pages is a lot of work, but there's a million and one online copywriters who are pretty good (and cheap) that you could assign projects to for it. Google copywriters for hire or freelance copywriters... could have it done in no time and not spend that much
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
-
Simple duplicate content query
Hello Community, One of my clients runs a job board website. They are having some new framework installed which will lead to them having to delete all their jobs and re-add them. The same jobs will be re-posted but with a different reference number which in turn with change each URL. I believe this will cause significant duplicate content issues, I just thought I would get a second opinion on best practice for approaching a situation like this. Would a possible solution be to delete jobs gradually and 301 re-direct old URLs to new URLs? Many thanks in advance, Adam
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Content Duplication - Zencart
Hi Guys !!! Based on crawler results, it shows that I have 188 duplicate content pages, out of which some are those in which I am not able to understand where the duplication is ??? The page created is unique. All the URL's are static, all titles, metat tags are unique. How do I remove this duplication !!! I am using Zencart as a platform. Thanks in advance for the help !!! 🙂
Technical SEO | | sidjain4you0 -
Duplicate Title and Content. How to fix?
So this is the biggest error I have. But I don't know how to fix it. I get that I have to make it so that the duplicats redirect to the source, but I don't know how to do that. For example, this is out of our crawl diagnostic: | On The Block - Page 3 http://www.maddenstudents.com/forumdisplay.php?57-On-The-Block/page3 1 1 0 On The Block - Page 3 http://www.maddenstudents.com/forumdisplay.php?57-On-The-Block/page3&s=8d631e0ac09b7a462164132b60433f98 | 1 | 1 | 0 | That's just an example. But I have over 1000+ like that. How would I go about fixing that? Getting rid of the "&s=8d631e0ac09b7a462164132b60433f98"? I have godaddy as my domain and web hoster. Could they be able to fix it?
Technical SEO | | taychatha0 -
How to prevent duplicat content issue and indexing sub domain [ CDN sub domain]?
Hello! I wish to use CDN server to optimize my page loading time ( MaxCDN). I have to use a custom CDN sub domain to use these services. If I added a sub domain, then my blog has two URL (http://www.example.com and http://cdn.example.com) for the same content. I have more than 450 blog posts. I think it will cause duplicate content issues. In this situation, what is the best method (rel=canonical or no-indexing) to prevent duplicate content issue and prevent indexing sub domain? And take the optimum service of the CDN. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content
Hi All, I am getting warnings about duplicate page content. The pages are normally 'tag' pages. I have some blog posts tagged with multiple 'tags'. Does it really affect my site?. I am using wordpress and Yoast SEO plugin. Thanks
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Pages with different content and meta description marked as duplicate content
I am running into an issue where I have pages with completely different body and meta description but they are still being marked as having the same content (Duplicate Page Content error). What am I missing here? Examples: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/what-to-expect-in-the-summer-internship
Technical SEO | | WallStreetOasis.com
and
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/blog/something-ventured http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/im-in-the-long-run
and
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/image/jhjpeg0 -
Google Duplicate Content Penalty On My Own Site?
I am certain that I have hit a google penalty filter for my site http://www.playpokeronline.ca for my main keywords "play poker online" in google.ca I rank 670th and used to be on the first page between 1 and 10 in June. On Bing I am like 9th On my site I found the entire site duplicated as follows Original: www.playpokeronline.ca Duplicate www.playpokeronline.ca/playpokeronline/ this duplicate was not intentional and seems to be a result of my hosting at godaddy. for every page on my site and it shows up in webmaster tools I blocked the duplicate with robots.txt and a few days ago dropped it and wrote a rel=connonical tag in the top of each page visitors dropped from 100 per day in august to 12-20 in the last month. Google says that if duplicate content is made to try to game serps they may filter or penalize my site. Have I triggered this penalty or a different sort of over optimization penalty? Will the rel= canonical tags fix this or should i do something else? This Penalty Business is Not my Idea of a good time Thank You Jeb
Technical SEO | | PokerCanada0 -
Duplicate Content Issue
Hi Everyone, I ran into a problem I didn't know I had (Thanks to the seomoz tool) regarding duplicate content. my site is oxford ms homes.net and when I built the site, the web developer used php to build it. After he was done I saw that the URL's looking like this "/blake_listings.php?page=0" and I wanted them like this "/blakes-listings" He changed them with no problem and he did the same with all 300 pages or so that I have on the site. I just found using the crawl diagnostics tool that I have like 3,000 duplicate content issues. Is there an easy fix to this at all or does he have to go in and 301 Redirect EVERY SINGLE URL? Thanks for any help you can give.
Technical SEO | | blake-766240