Duplicate Content and Canonical use
-
We have a pagination issue, which the developers seem reluctant (or incapable) to fix whereby we have 3 of the same page (slightly differing URLs) coming up in different pages in the archived article index. The indexing convention was very poorly thought up by the developers and has left us with the same article on, for example, page 1, 2 and 3 of the article index, hence the duplications.
Is this a clear cut case of using a canonical tag? Quite concerned this is going to have a negative impact on ranking, of course.
Cheers
Martin
-
The developer now claims that including a mon_page attribute (1&mon_page=1) within the URL will let Google know how our archiving system works and, thus, prevent us from being penalised for duplications. Any help is greatly appreciated. Trouble finding info on this.
-
If the articles are also featured on individual pages I would recommend NOINDEX for 2 of those pages, and a canonical tag for the correct page.
-
I can't see how letting Google know through the use of canonical tags which is the predominant page to look at, is going to have any impact on your SEO, other than a positive one. Remember that in doing this you are making positive changes.
As Theo mentioned above, you can also 301 two of the pages you dont want indexed as well.
Good luck,
Andy
-
I think the canonical tag would do quite well in this case, though you want want to consider a 301 redirect first. Both would require you to decide which URL is the 'main' one though, and either add a canonical tag with that URL to the other pages, or have the other pages 301 to the main one.
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 issue
Hi, A client of ours has one URL for the moment (https://aalst.mobilepoint.be/) and wants to create a second one with exactly the same content (https://deinze.mobilepoint.be/). Will that mean Google punishes the second one because of duplicate content? What are the recommendations?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
Duplicate content w/ same URLs
I am getting high priority issues for our privacy & terms pages that have the same URL. Why would this show up as duplicate content? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RanvirGujral0 -
Minimising the effects of duplicate content
Hello, We realised that one of our clients, copied a large part of content from our website to his. The normal reaction would be to send a cease and desist letter. Nevertheless this would probably mean loosing a good client. The client dumped the text of several articles (for example:
Technical SEO | | Lvet
http://www.velascolawyers.com/en/property-law/136-the-ley-de-costas-coastal-law.html ) Into the same page:
http://www.freundlinger-partners.com/en/home/faqs-property-law/ I convinced the client to place our authorship tags on this page, but I am wondering if this is enough. What do you think? Cheers
Luca0 -
Duplicate content issue
Moz crawl diagnostic tool is giving me a heap of duplicate content for each event on my website... http://www.ticketarena.co.uk/events/Mint-Festival-7/ http://www.ticketarena.co.uk/events/Mint-Festival-7/index.html Should i use a 301 redirect on the second link? i was unaware that this was classed as duplicate content. I thought it was just the way the CMS system was set up? Can anyone shed any light on this please. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Alexogilvie0 -
Wordpress tags and duplicate content?
I've seen a few other Q&A posts on this but I haven't found a complete answer. I read somewhere a while ago that you can use as many tags as you would like. I found that I rank for each tag I used. For example, I could rank for best night clubs in san antonio, good best night clubs in san antonio, great best night clubs in san antonio, top best night clubs in san antonio, etc. However, I now see that I'm creating a ton of duplicate content. Is there any way to set a canonical tag on the tag pages to link back to the original post so that I still keep my rankings? Would future tags be ignored if I did this?
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
Duplicate content problem?
Hello! I am not sure if this is a problem or if I am just making something too complicated. Here's the deal. I took on a client who has an existing site in something called homestead. Files cannot be downloaded, making it tricky to get out of homestead. The way it is set up is new sites are developed on subdomains of homestead.com, and then your chosen domain points to this subdomain. The designer who built it has kindly given me access to her account so that I can edit the site, but this is awkward. I want to move the site to its own account. However, to do so Homestead requires that I create a new subdomain and copy the files from one to the other. They don't have any way to redirect the prior subdomain to the new one. They recommend I do something in the html, since that is all I can access. Am I unnecessarily worried about the duplicate content consequences? My understanding is that now I will have two subdomains with the same exact content. True, over time I will be editing the new one. But you get what I'm sayin'. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | devbook90 -
How to use rel canonical?
Hi, I am having some questions about this and I think you can help me on this. Here I have the example of my problem: pagination: Suppose that I have a new with 2 pages http://www.espectador.com/noticias/208907/fernando-pereira-encuesta-de-cifra-prendio-una-lucecita-amarilla-en-el-pit-cnt you can access the first page by different ways: www.espectador.com/1v4_contenido.php?m=&id=250419&ipag=1 http://www.espectador.com/1v4_contenido.php?m=&id=250419 http://www.espectador.com/noticias/250419/alvaro-vega-fa-creo-que-cosmo-fue-usada-por-bqb-para-evitar-una-subasta-a-la-baja-y-asi-quedar-con-las-manos-libres Same meta descr, same body with different URLs. Can I use rel canonical in the file 1v4_contenido.php that point to the friendly url? <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="[http://www.espectador.com/noticias/250419/alvaro-vega-fa-creo-que-cosmo-fue-usada-por-bqb-para-evitar-una-subasta-a-la-baja-y-asi-quedar-con-las-manos-libres](view-source:http://www.espectador.com/noticias/250419/alvaro-vega-fa-quotcreo-que-cosmo-fue-usada-por-bqb-para-evitar-una-subasta-a-la-bajaquot-y-asi-quotquedar-con-las-manos-libresquot)"/> do I have a loop here? The rel canonical can goes in the page 1? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
Duplicate Content Question
Just signed up for pro and did my first diagnostic check - I came back with something like 300 duplicate content errors which suprised me because every page is unique. Turns out my pages are listed as www.sportstvjobs.com and just sportstvjobs.com does that really count as duplicate? and if so does anyone know what I should be doing differently? I thought it was just a canonical issue, but best I can tell I have the canonical in there but this still came up as a duplicate error....maybe I did canonical wrong, or its some other issue? Thanks Brian Clapp
Technical SEO | | sportstvjobs0