Strange duplicate content issue
-
Hi there,
SEOmoz crawler has identified a set of duplicate content that we are struggling to resolve.
For example, the crawler picked up that this page www. creative - choices.co.uk/industry-insight/article/Advice-for-a-freelance-career is a duplicate of this page www. creative - choices.co.uk/develop-your-career/article/Advice-for-a-freelance-career.
The latter page's content is the original and can be found in the CMS admin area whilst the former page is the duplicate and has no entry in the CMS. So we don't know where to begin if the "duplicate" page doesn't exist in the CMS.
The crawler states that this page www. creative-choices.co.uk/industry-insight/inside/creative-writing is the referrer page. Looking at it, only the original page's link is showing on the referrer page, so how did the crawler get to the duplicate page?
-
it could be any one out of the following 3 scenarios.
1: The page in question was moved at some point and since the CMS still accepts the old URL, when google re-visits the old URL it still finds it. So in this scenario it will find both the old URL and the new URL and index both.
2: google hasn't revisited the page for a long while but it is still in it's index, even though it would get a 301 by the CMS when it visits the page. Can be easily fixed by going to webmaster tools and ask it to remove it from the index.
3: there are still links to the old URL either on site or off site and since the CMS doesn't 301 the oid page it will index it again with a new URL.
4:the page still exists in the CMS because of some strange setting or equivalent in the CMS.
as mentioned before the easy fix is to use a robots.txt and deny access to the page and ask google to remove it from it's index. the better fix is to find the problem in the CMS and solve it. a midway fix could be to 301 it in the .htaccess or equvilent on an ISS server.
hope it helped
-
Thanks René,
I updated my earlier reply with a question that i think you missed.
The list isn't growing, which is a good thing but how is it possible for the crawler to pick up the duplicate page urls when the the referrer page has the correct urls?
-
I have come across this sort of issue a gazillion times + infinite.. almost all of our clients seem to have dub cont problems of one kind or another
but often it is different things that is the problem. But I'm afraid that I can't point you in the right direction, since I have no experience with your CMS. To be able to do that I would need to have access to the site itself. (since I don't know the CMS.) My advice would be to get a developer on the issue or to grab hold of the support for the CMS (if any.)
-
Hi René,
Thanks for your reply and suggestions. It could well be CMS remembering old urls as this list isn't growing. But is the crawler able to pickup the old urls when the referrer page has the correct urls?
We are on Expression Engine. Have you come across this sort of issue before?
-
Well it kinda have to be in the CMS, since it has 2 different paths.. But you could fix it by going to the .htaccess (if you have access and redirect it to the right URL and make a robots.txt and disallow access to the page.
if the page has been moved to a new location theres a good chance that the CMS is setup to remember the old URL and show the page. This is indeed a problem, but a potential problem with the CMS.
Go to webmaster tools and ask them to delete the dublicate from thier index.
You specific problem could originate from a ton of different problems and it is kinda har to fix without direct access to everything. What CMS is it your using?
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
-
I have duplicate content but // are causing them
I have 3 pages duplicated just by a / Example: https://intercallsystems.com/intercall-nurse-call-systems**//**
Technical SEO | | Renalynd
https://intercallsystems.com/intercall-nurse-call-systems**/** What would cause this?? And how would I fix it? Thanks! Rena0 -
Duplicate Content Issues - Where to start???
Dear All I have recently joined a new company Just Go Holidays - www.justgoholidays.com I have used the SEO Moz tools (yesterday) to review the site and see that I have lots of duplicate content/pages and also lots of duplicate titles all of which I am looking to deal with. Lots of the duplicate pages appear to be surrounding, additional parameters that are used on our site to refine and or track various marketing campaigns. I have therefore been into Google Webmaster Tools and defined each of these parameters. I have also built a new XML sitemap and submitted that too. It looks as is we have two versions of the site, one being at www.justgoholidays.com and the other without the www It appears that there are no redirects from the latter to the former, do I need to use 301's here or is it ok to use canonicalisation instead? Any thoughts on an action plan to try to address these issues in the right order and the right way would be very gratefully received as I am feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. (we also use a CMS system that is not particularly friendly and I think I will have to go directly to the developers to make lots of the required changes which is sure to cost - therefore really don't want to get this wrong) All the best Matt
Technical SEO | | MattByrne0 -
URL Mixed Cases and Duplicate Content
Hi There, I have a question for you. I am working on a website where by typing any letter of the URL in lower or upper case, it will give a 200 code. Examples www.examples.com/page1/product www.examples.com/paGe1/Product www.examples.com/PagE1/prOdUcT www.examples.com/pAge1/proODUCt and so on… Although I cannot find evidence of backlinks pointing to my page with mixed cases, shall I redirect or rel=canonical all the possible combination of the cases to a lower version of them in order to prevent duplicate content? And if so, do you have any advice on how to complete such a massive job? Thanks a lot
Technical SEO | | Midleton0 -
Mobile and hidden content - Any issue for SEO?
In reference to mobile - am I walking a fine SEO line when it comes to hidden content on mobile? On the responsive variations of sites we are working on some content is hidden (that displays on the desktop version of the site) so that pages on mobile can display correctly. Is this negative for SEO? Appreciate any feedback Cheers.
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Rel=canonical overkill on duplicate content?
Our site has many different health centers - many of which contain duplicate content since there is topic crossover between health centers. I am using rel canonical to deal with this. My question is this: Is there a tipping point for duplicate content where Google might begin to penalize a site even if it has the rel canonical tags in place on cloned content? As an extreme example, a site could have 10 pieces of original content, but could then clone and organize this content in 5 different directories across the site each with a new url. This would ultimately result in the site having more "cloned" content than original content. Is this at all problematic even if the rel canonical is in place on all cloned content? Thanks in advance for any replies. Eric
Technical SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
Question about duplicate content within my site
Hi. New here to SEOmoz and also somewhat new to SEO in general. A friend has asked me to help do some onsite SEO for their company's website. The company uses Drupal Content Management System. They have a couple product pages that contain a tabbed section for features, accessories, etc. When they built their tabs, they used a Drupal module called Quicktabs, by which each individual tab is created as a separate page and then pulled into the tabs from those pages. So, in essence, you now have instances of repeated content. 1) the page used to create the tab, and 2) the tab that displays on the product page. My question is, how should I handle the pages that were used to create the tabs? Should I make them NOINDEX? Thank you for your advice in advance.
Technical SEO | | aprilm-1890400 -
Solution for duplicate content not working
I'm getting a duplicate content error for: http://www.website.com http://www.website.com/default.htm I searched for the Q&A for the solution and found: Access the.htaccess file and add this line: redirect 301 /default.htm http://www.website.com I added the redirect to my .htaccess and then got the following error from Google when trying to access the http://www.website.com/default.htm page: "This webpage has a redirect loop
Technical SEO | | Joeuspe
The webpage at http://www.webpage.com/ has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer." "Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects." How can I correct this? Thanks0 -
E-Commerce Duplicate Content
Hello all We have an e-commerce website with approximately 3,000 products. Many of the products are displayed in multiple categories which in turn generates a different URL! 😞 Accross the entire site I have noticed that the product pages are always outranked by competitors who have lower page authority, domain authority, total links etc etc. I am convinced this is down to duplicate content issues. I understand there is no direct penalty but how would this affect our rankings? Is page rank split between all the duplicates, which in turn lowers it's ranking potential? I have looked for a way to identify duplicate content using Google analytics but i've been unsuccessful. If the duplicate content is the issue and page rank is divided am i best using canonical or 301 redirects? Sorry if this is an obvious question but If i'm correct we could see a huge improvement in rankings accross the board. Wow! Cheers Todd
Technical SEO | | toddyC0