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
-
To what extent is content considered unique or duplicate?
I work primarily on classifieds websites and an issue I consistently come across are two or more URLs which have the exact same ad count, due to site structure and the way everything is categorized. An example of such would be with these two pages: https://www.boatshop24.co.uk/motorboats/princess https://www.boatshop24.co.uk/boats-for-sale/princess/power These two have the exact same number of ads- would search engines mark these as duplicate content? Both have different meta descriptions, title tags etc. but essentially the MC is exactly the same. If they are, what would be the best course to remedy the problem? I'm skeptical about using canonical tags as I generally use them for exact duplicate pages.
Technical SEO | | Sayers0 -
Duplicate Content issue in Magento: The product pages are available true 3 URL's! How can we solve this?
Right now the product page "gedroogde goji bessen" (Dutch for: dried goji berries) is available true 3 URL's! **http://www.sportvoeding.net/gedroogde-goji-bessen ** =>
Technical SEO | | Zanox
By clicking on the product slider on the homepage
http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/gedroogde-goji-bessen =>
First go to sportvoeding.net/superfood (main categorie) and than clicking on "gedroogde Goji bessen"
http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/goji-bessen/gedroogde-goji-bessen =>
When directly go to the subcategorie "Goji Bessen" true the menu and there clicking on "gedroogde Goji Bessen" We want to have the following product URL:
http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/goji-bessen/gedroogde-goji-bessen Does someone know´s a good Exetension for this issue?0 -
How to prevent duplicate content in archives?
My news site has a number of excerpts in the form of archives based on categories that is causing duplicate content problems. Here's an example with the nutrition archive. The articles here are already posts, so it creates the duplicate content. Should I nofollow/noindex this category page along with the rest and 2011,2012 archives etc (see archives here)? Thanks so much for any input!
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
Is there ever legitimate near duplicate content?
Hey guys, I’ve been reading the blogs and really appreciate all the great feedback. It’s nice to see how supportive this community is to each other. I’ve got a question about near duplicate content. I’ve read a bunch of great post regarding what is duplicate content and how to fix it. However, I’m looking at a scenario that is a little different from what I’ve read about. I’m not sure if we’d get penalized by Google or not. We are working with a group of small insurance agencies that have combined some of their back office work, and work together to sell the same products, but for the most part act as what they are, independent agencies. So we now have 25 different little companies, in 25 different cities spread across the southeast, all selling the same thing. Each agency has their own URL, each has their own Google local places registration, their own backlinks to their local chambers, own contact us and staff pages, etc. However, we have created landing pages for each product line, with the hopes of attracting local searches. While we vary each landing page a little per agency (the auto insurance page in CA talks about driving down the 101, while the auto insurance page in Georgia says welcome to the peach state) probably 75% of the land page content is the same from agency to agency. There is only so much you can say about specific lines of insurance. They have slightly different titles, slightly different headers, but the bulk of the page is the same. So here is the question, will Google hit us with a penalty for having similar content across the 25 sites? If so, how do you handle this? We are trying to write create content, and unique content, but at the end of the day auto insurance in one city is pretty much the same as in another city. Thanks in advance for your help.
Technical SEO | | mavrick0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi - We are due to launch a .com version of our site, with the ability to put prices into local currency, whereas our .co.uk site will be solely £. If the content on both the .com and .co.uk sites is the same (at product level mainly), will we be penalised? What is the best way to get around this?
Technical SEO | | swgolf1230 -
Duplicate Content
Hello All, my first web crawl has come back with a duplicate content warning for www.simodal.com and www.simodal.com/index.htm slightly mystified! thanks paul
Technical SEO | | simodal0 -
Duplicate content connundrum
Hey Mozzers- I have a tricky situation with one of my clients. They're a reputable organization and have been mentioned in several major news articles. They want to create a Press page on their site with links to each article, but they want viewers to remain within the site and not be redirected to the press sites themselves. The other issue is some of the articles have been removed from the original press sites where they were first posted. I want to avoid duplicate content issues, but I don't see how to repost the articles within the client's site. I figure I have 3 options: 1. create PDFs (w/SEO-friendly URLs) with the articles embedded in them that open in a new window. 2. Post an image with screenshot of article on a unique URL w/brief content. 3. Copy and paste the article to a unique URL. If anyone has experience with this issue or any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it. Jaime Brown
Technical SEO | | JamesBSEO0 -
Duplicate title issue
During the crwal SEO moz found duplicate title problems with quite a good number of pages. This was because my site has test questions like http://www.skill-guru.com/12/scjp-5-mock-test/questions and when user does next or previous, they can traverse to different pages but the title and descrition would remain same. How can this probkem be resolved ?
Technical SEO | | skill-guru2