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
-
Duplicate Content
HI There, Hoping someone can help me - before i damage my desk banging my head. Getting notifications from ahrefs and Moz for duplicate content. I have no idea where these weird urls have came from , but they do take us to the correct page (but it seems a duplicate of this page). correct url http://www.acsilver.co.uk/shop/pc/Antique-Vintage-Rings-c152.htm Incorrect url http://www.acsilver.co.uk/shop/pc/vintage-Vintage-Rings- c152.htm This is showing for most of our store categories 😞 Desperate for help as to what could be causing these issues. I have a technical member of the ecommerce software go through the large sitemap files and they assured me it wasn't linked to the sitemap files. Gemma
Technical SEO | | acsilver0 -
Duplicate Content
Crawl Diagnostics has returned several issues that I'm unsure how to fix. I'm guessing it's a canonical link issue but not entirely sure... Duplicate Page Content/Titles On a website (http://www.smselectronics.co.uk/market-sectors) with 6 market sectors but each pull the same 3 pages as child pages - certifications, equipment & case studies. On each products section where the page only shows X amount of items but there are several pages to fit all the products this creates multiple pages. There is also a similar pagination problem with the Blogs (auto generated date titles & user created SEO titles) & News listings. Blog Tags also seem to generate duplicate pages with the same content/titles as the parent page. Are these particularly important for SEO or is it more important to remove the duplication by deleting them? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | BBDCreative0 -
Duplicate content
I'm getting an error showing that two separate pages have duplicate content. The pages are: | Help System: Domain Registration Agreement - Registrar Register4Less, Inc. http://register4less.com/faq/cache/11.html 1 27 1 Help System: Domain Registration Agreement - Register4Less Reseller (Tucows) http://register4less.com/faq/cache/7.html | These are both registration agreements, one for us (Register4Less, Inc.) as the registrar, and one for Tucows as the registrar. The pages are largely the same, but are in fact different. Is there a way to flag these pages as not being duplicate content? Thanks, Doug.
Technical SEO | | R4L0 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Content
I have a site that has a lot of contact modules. So basically each section/page has a contact person and when you click the contact button it brings up a new window with form to submit and then ends with a thank you page. All of the contact and thank you pages are showing up as duplicate page titles and content. Is this something that needs to be fixed even if I am not using them to target keywords?
Technical SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Cross-domain duplicate content issue
Hey all, Just double-checking something. Here's the issue, briefly. One of my clients is a large law firm. The firm has a main site, and an additional site for an office in Atlanta. On the main site, there is a list of all attorneys and links to their profiles (that they wrote themselves). The Atlanta site has this as well, but lists only the attorneys located in that office. I would like to have the profiles for the Atlanta lawyers on both sites. Would rel=canonical work to avoid a dupe-content smackdown? The profiles should rank for Atlanta over the main site. This just means that G will drop the main site's profiles (for those attorneys) from their index, correct? No other weird side effects? I hope I worded all that clearly!
Technical SEO | | LCNetwork0 -
I am Posting an article on my site and another site has asked to use the same article - Is this a duplicate content issue with google if i am the creator of the content and will it penalize our sites - or one more than the other??
I operate an ecommerce site for outdoor gear and was invited to guest post on a popular blog (not my site) for a trip i had been on. I wrote the aritcle for them and i also will post this same article on my website. Is this a dup content problem with google? and or the other site? Any Help. Also if i wanted to post this same article to 1 or 2 other blogs as long as they link back to me as the author of the article
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Duplicate Content Issues - Should I build a new site?
I'm currently working on a site which is built using Zen Cart. The client also has another version which has the same products on it. The product descriptions and the vast majority of the text has been re-written. I've used the duplicate content tool and these are the results: HTML fingerprint: 0000a7ee1f07a131 0000a7ec1f07a931 92.31% Total HTML similarity: 76.33% Standard text similarity: 66.72% Smart text similarity: 45.81% Total text similarity 56.27% I considered using a different eCommerce system like Magento or Volusion. So I had a look at a few templates, chose one and then used the tool again and got the following: HTML fingerprint: 0000a7e41b012111 0000a7ec1f07a931 72.00% Total HTML similarity: 64.65% Standard text similarity: 11.69% Smart text similarity: 17.90% Total text similarity 14.80% Do you think its worth doing this? thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | TheYeti0 -
SEO with duplicate content for 3 geographies
The client would like us to do seo for these 3 sites http://www.cablecalc.com/ http://www.solutionselectrical.com.au http://www.calculatecablesizes.co.uk/ The sites have to targetted in US, Australia, and UK resoectively .All the above sites have identical content. Will Google penalise the sites ? Shall we change the content completly ? How do we approach this issue ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050