Removing Duplicate Page Content
-
Since joining SEOMOZ four weeks ago I've been busy tweaking our site, a magento eCommerce store, and have successfully removed a significant portion of the errors.
Now I need to remove/hide duplicate pages from the search engines and I'm wondering what is the best way to attack this?
Can I solve this in one central location, or do I need to do something in the Google & Bing webmaster tools?
Here is a list of duplicate content
http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=asc&mode=grid&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=asc&mode=list&order=name
http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=asc&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=desc&mode=grid&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=desc&mode=list&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=desc&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?mode=grid http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?mode=listThanks in advance,
Steve
-
Thank you Cyrus I will certainly read the blog post and consider the noindex, nofollow on content with a canonical tag that differs from the current served page' uri.
I am still at little confused as to why the SEOMOZ crawl is highlighting duplicate pages when the canonical tag is present and pointing to the primary content.
Take the following example page for example:-
http://www.planksclothing.com/planks-classic-t-shirt-black-multi.html
Firstly the page has a canonical tag. There is no search on the site and product is viewed a root level without directory structure, which in a Magento instance is the common problem with duplicate content...
Currently at the time of writing SEOMOZ is updating my duplicate repor, so I can't find out what is the duplicate content. Maybe it is updating to say it is not
Thanks
Amendment: After reading the supplied blog post (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world) I have learn't that the above page is just not different and probably is in the area of "Thin Content".
-
There are many, many different types of duplicate content, and how you handle it depends on the specific type of duplicate content and your needs.
If you haven't already, I highly suggest you read Dr. Pete's excellent post on dupe content here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
In your specific case it looks like you have multiple parameters serving the same basic content as your homepage. Is this correct?
In this case, you should set a canonical on every page pointing to the homepage. This also has the benefit of solving the errors in the SEOmoz PRO app.
It also sounds like you've addressed the issue in Google's Webmaster Tools. Unfortunately, Google doesn't let SEOmoz sync with Webmaster Tools, so anything you set there won't show up in the Web App.
Finally, don't forget about Bing Webmaster. They have similar parameter settings you can submit.
By the way, some SEOs would suggest putting meta robots "NOINDEX, FOLLOW" tags on those duplicate pages. While this may potentially send conflicting signals when coupled with the canonical tag, it is a potentially valid approach.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
This is exactly my current situation...
As a result of the SEOMOZ Duplicate content report I set about resolving these issues...
In the first instance I configured URL parameters via Google Webmaster Tools. It instantly occurred to me that whilst this fixes these potential duplicate content in Google this configuration does not affect other search engines and the work is unlikely to be reflected in future SEOMOZ crawls of the site.
I'm interested in creating a over arching method of removing the potential duplication caused via URL parameters required to paginate, sort and filter content. The majority of these URL parameters are standardized across web applications. But is it actually required?
In my case each Magento store uses the canonical tag correctly and has an updated robots.txt to restrict the crawling of areas of the site that should be excluded... In a sense this is the over arching method of removing potential duplicate content. So why is SEOMOZ reporting duplicate content?
I suppose the big question is... Is SEOMOZ crawling the site correctly, do these results reflect robots.txt and canonical tags?
-
Thank you for your thoughts.
As mentioned in my above response, canonical tags have already been configured for the site, it's just this home page that remains the issue.
-
Thanks for your response.
I looked in URL Parameters and see dir & mode are already defined.
Then I searched the http://www.unitedbmwonline.com page source for canonical links and none are defined, though I do have canonical tags setup for the rest of the site
Any other thoughts of how to remove these duplicates?
-
You can also tell Google to ignore certain query string variables through Webmaster Tools.
For instance, indicate that "dir" and "mode" have no impact on content.
Other SE's have simular controls.
-
This is why the canonical tag was invented, to solve duplicate content issues when URL parameters are involved. Set a canonical tag on all these pages to point towards the version of the page you want to appear in search results. As long as the pages are identical, or close to it, the search engines (most likely) will respect the canonical tag, and pass along the duplicate versions link juice to the page you're pointing to.
Here's some info: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html. If you Google "canonical tag", you'll find lots more!
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 created by website Calendar - A Penalty?
A colleague of mine asked me a question about duplicate content coming from their event calendar. I don't think this will affect them negatively, but I would love some feedback and thoughts. ThanksOne of my clients, LifeTech Academy, is using my RavenTools software. Raventools has reported a HUGE amount of duplicate content (4.4K instances).The duplicate content all revolves around their calendar and repeating events (http://lifetechacademy.org/events/)The question is this - will this impact their SEO efforts in a negative way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bill_K0 -
Concerns of Duplicative Content on Purchased Site
Recently I purchased a site of 50+ DA (oldsite.com) that had been offline/404 for 9-12 months from the previous owner. The purchase included the domain and the content previously hosted on the domain. The backlink profile is 100% contextual and pristine. Upon purchasing the domain, I did the following: Rehosted the old site and content that had been down for 9-12 months on oldsite.com Allowed a week or two for indexation on oldsite.com Hosted the old content on my newsite.com and then performed 100+ contextual 301 redirects from the oldsite.com to newsite.com using direct and wild card htaccess rules Issued a Press Release declaring the acquisition of oldsite.com for newsite.com Performed a site "Change of Name" in Google from oldsite.com to newsite.com Performed a site "Site Move" in Bing/Yahoo from oldsite.com to newsite.com It's been close to a month and while organic traffic is growing gradually, it's not what I would expect from a domain with 700+ referring contextual domains. My current concern is around original attribution of content on oldsite.com shifting to scraper sites during the year or so that it was offline. For Example: Oldsite.com has full attribution prior to going offline Scraper sites scan site and repost content elsewhere (effort unsuccessful at time because google know original attribution) Oldsite.com goes offline Scraper sites continue hosting content Google loses consumer facing cache from oldsite.com (and potentially loses original attribution of content) Google reassigns original attribution to a scraper site Oldsite.com is hosted again and Google no longer remembers it's original attribution and thinks content is stolen Google then silently punished Oldsite.com and Newsite.com (which it is redirected to) QUESTIONS Does this sequence have any merit? Does Google keep track of original attribution after the content ceases to exist in Google's search cache? Are there any tools or ways to tell if you're being punished for content being posted else on the web even if you originally had attribution? Unrelated: Are there any other steps that are recommend for a Change of site as described above.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PetSite0 -
Rotating Content Concern on Deep Pages
Hi there, I apologize if I'm too vague, but this is a tough issue describe without divulging too much of our project. I'm working on a new project which will provide information results in sets of 3. Let's say someone wants to find 3 books that match their criteria, either through their organic search which leads them to us, or through their internal search on our site. For instance, if they're looking for classic movies involving monsters, we might display Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Mummy. We'd list unique descriptions about the movies and include lots of other useful information. However, there are obviously many more monster movies than those 3, so when a user refreshes the page or accesses it again, a different set of results show up. For this example, assume we have 5 results to choose from. So it's likely Google will index different results shuffled around. I'm worried about this causing problems down the line with ranking. The meat and potatoes of the page content are the descriptions and information on the movies. If these are constantly changing, I'm afraid the page will look "unstable" to Google since we have no real static content beyond a header and title tag. Can anyone offer any insight to this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirmeliux0 -
Duplicate keyphrases in page titles = penalty?
Hello Mozzers - just looking at a website which has duplicate keyphrases in its page titles... So you have [keyphrase 1] | [exact match Keyphrase 1] Now I happen to know this particular site has suffered a dramatic fall in traffic - the SEO agency working on the site had advised the client to duplicate keyphrases. Hard to believe, huh! What I'm wondering is whether this extensive exact match keyphrase duplication might've been enough to attract a penalty? Your thoughts would be welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Joomla duplicate content
My website report says http://www.enigmacrea.com/diseno-grafico-portafolio-publicidad and http://www.enigmacrea.com/diseno-grafico-portafolio-publicidad?limitstart=0 Has the same content so I have duplicate pages the only problem is the ?limitstart=0 How can I fix this? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kuavicrea0 -
Need help with duplicate content. Same content; different locations.
We have 2 sites that will have duplicate content (e.g., one company that sells the same products under two different brand names for legal reasons). The two companies are in different geographical areas, but the client will put the same content on each page because they're the same product. What is the best way to handle this? Thanks a lot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rocket.Fuel0 -
Duplicate content, website authority and affiliates
We've got a dilemma at the moment with the content we supply to an affiliate. We currently supply the affiliate with our product database which includes everything about a product including the price, title, description and images. The affiliate then lists the products on their website and provides a Commission Junction link back to our ecommerce store which tracks any purchases with the affiliate getting a commission based on any sales via a cookie. This has been very successful for us in terms of sales but we've noticed a significant dip over the past year in ranking whilst the affiliate has achieved a peak...all eyes are pointing towards the Panda update. Whenever I type one of our 'uniquely written' product descriptions into Google, the affiliate website appears higher than ours suggesting Google has ranked them the authority. My question is, without writing unique content for the affiliate and changing the commission junction link. What would be the best option to be recognised as the authority of the content which we wrote in the first place? It always appears on our website first but Google seems to position the affiliate higher than us in the SERPS after a few weeks. The commission junction link is written like this: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1428744-10475505?sid=shopp&url=http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/vango-calisto-600xl-tent.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinhoman0 -
Duplicate content for area listings
Hi, I was slightly affected by the panda update on the 14th oct generaly dropping by about 5-8 spots in the serps for my main keywords, since then I've been giving my site a good looking over. On a site I've got city listings urls for certain widget companys, the thing is many areas and thus urls will have the same company listed. What would be the best way of solving this duplicate content as google may be seeing it? I was thinking of one page per company and prominenly listing the areas they operate so still hopefully get ranked for area searches. But i'd be losing the city names in the url as I've got them now for example: mywidgetsite.com/findmagicwidgets/new-york.html mywidgetsite.com/findmagicwidgets/atlanta.html Any ideas on how best to proceed? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NetGeek0