Duplicate product urls
-
Our site automatically creates shorter urls for the products. There is a rel canonical tag in place, but webmaster tools shows these urls have duplicate title tags. Here is an example: http://www.colemanfurniture.com/holden-desk.htm http://www.colemanfurniture.com/writing-desks-secretary-desks/holden-desk.htm Should the longer url be redirected to the shorter one?
-
And to add to Matt's reply, not all search engines recognize canonical tags, so if it is a dupe content issue, then 301s are vital.
-
Thanks Matt.
-
Alan - I did exactly the same thing... it was the wrong URL in the original post:
http://www.colemanfurniture.com/office-furniture/writing-desks-secretary-desks/holden-desk.htm
-Matt
-
Are the longer links historical or are they being pointed to from somewhere on your site?
If it's the latter I'd advise sorting out your internal linking structure so that it's the shorter URL that is pointed to. A canonical should be enough, but it's only a pointer... so if Google sees loads of links going to a page that is canonicalised which, in turn, points to a page with virtually no juice then it may be that the tag is ignored.
It's also worth finding out if it's just webmaster tools showing the error by checking if both pages are indexed. If they are, you definitely have a duplicate content issue... if not then it may just be a reporting error.
- Matt
-
When I went to the longer version URL just now, it took me to your "404 not found" page.
If the URL you want to use is the short version, then the long version should have a 301 redirect implemented pointing to the short version.
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 page content
These two URLs are being flagged as 98% similar in the code. We're a large ecommerce site, and while it would be ideal to have unique product descriptions on each page we currently don't have the bandwith. Thoughts on what else might be triggering this duplicate content? https://www.etundra.com/restaurant-parts/cooking-equipment-parts/fryers/scoops-skimmers/fmp-175-1081-fryer-crumb-scoop/ https://www.etundra.com/restaurant-equipment/concession-equipment/condiment-pumps/tablecraft-664-wide-mouth-condiment-pump/ Thanks, Natalie
On-Page Optimization | | eTundra0 -
Showing more Duplicate Title Tags Than WMT
This is yet another question between moz vs google WebMaster Tools. In WMT it only shows 5 pages with a total of 18 duplicate titles. But moz is showing 298. It appears the duplicates are canonical links for the most part. What is the discrepancy?
On-Page Optimization | | jamavan0 -
Duplicated content by the product pages
Hi,Do you thing those pages have duplicate content:https://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-phone-cards/from-Romania-235-2.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-phone-cards-2.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-Cell-phone-cards-401.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-Cell-phone-cards/from-Romania-235-401.html.And also how much impact will it have on a panda update?I'm trying to figure out if all the product pages, (that are in the same way as the ones above) are the reson for a Panda Penalty
On-Page Optimization | | Silviu0 -
Nice looking ecommerce menus with featured product categories - bad for SEO due to duplicate content?
My ecommerce website has menus which contain 'featured product sub-categories'. These are shown alongside the other product sub-category links. Each 'featured product category' includes a link, an image (with link) and some text. All menu content is visible to search engines. These menus look nice and probably encourage CTR (not tested!) but are they bad for SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | Coraltoes771 -
Duplicate links from forum what to do?
After a crawl it found over 5k errors and over 5k warnings. Those are: Duplicate page content; Duplicate page title; Overly-Dynamic URLs; Missing Meta descr; Title Element too long. All those come from domain.com/forum/ I don't need SEO on forum so what should I do? What could be an easy solution to this? No index? No follow? Please help
On-Page Optimization | | OVJ0 -
Duplicate Page Title issues
Hello, I have a duplicate page title problem: Crawl Diagnostics Reported that my website got **sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Title **between:
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs.html and these URLs below:http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-2
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-3
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-4
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-5 I don't know why, because I have already implemented rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to canonical pages. Please give me an advice!0 -
Duplicate page title - blogs
Hope someone can help me, I am a total SEO noivce so please be gentle. My first report shows that I have duplicate page titles. I have been through and changed all of these so they are different and after my latest crawl they are still showing as duplicates. I am wondering if this is because it;s a blog, here is one of the duplicates: http://www.cottagesoapcompany.co.uk/blog/?row=1 Hope you can help!
On-Page Optimization | | emmamoulden0 -
Duplicate Page Content Issue
For one of our campaigns, we have 164 errors for Duplicate Page Content. We have a website where much of the same content lives in two different places on their website. The information needs to be accessible from both areas. What is the best way to tackle this problem? Is there anything that can be done so these pages are not competing against one another? If the only solution is to edit the content on one of the pages, how much of the content has to be different? Is there a certain percentage to go by? Here is an example of what I am referring to: 1.) http://www.valleyorthopedicassociates.com/services/foot-center/preventing-sprains-and-strains 2.) http://www.valleyorthopedicassociates.com/patient-resources/service/foot-and-ankle-center/preventing-sprains-and-strains
On-Page Optimization | | cmaseattle1