Mobile version creating duplicate content
-
Hi
We have a mobile site which is a subfolder within our site.
Therefore our desktop site is www.mysite.com and the mobile version is www.mysite.com/m/. All URL's for specific pages are the same with the exception of /m/ in them for the mobile version.
The mobile version has the specific user agent detection capabilities. I never saw this as being duplicate content initially as I did some research and found the following links
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY9h3G8Lv4k
http://searchengineland.com/dont-penalize-yourself-mobile-sites-are-not-duplicate-content-40380
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022109.htmlWhat I am finding now is that when I look into Google Webmaster Tools, Google shows that there are 2 pages with the same Page title and therefore Im concerned if Google sees this as duplicate content. The reason why the page title and meta description is the same is simply because the content on the 2 verrsions are the exact same. Only layout changes due to handheld specific browsing.
Are there any speficific precausions I could take or best practices to ensure that Google does not see the mobile pages as duplicates of the desktop pages
Does anyone know solid best practices to achieve maximum results for running an idential mobile version of your main site?
-
Consider creating a user agent detection that will use a different style sheet when a mobile device requests it. OR you can use the mobile user agent to create progressive enhancement - building whatever the device wil allow. Check out some of mobile css and/or progressive enhancement resources online first for more details.
-
Are there any speficific precausions I could take or best practices to ensure that Google does not see the mobile pages as duplicates of the desktop pages
I was referring to the part on Canonical and Duplicate Versions of Content which you can also read here: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
If your mobile site has the same content as your full version, then the mobile site should canonicalize to the full version.
This is how you handle duplicate content.
-
Hi Richard
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I dont think you've read my question as I am fimiliar with that guide but it doesn't seem to answer my question at all. Maybe you can elaborate or point out something specific that you wanted me to see?
Thanks though. Cheers
-
This is the perfect use of canonicalizing the page.
Start here: http://guides.seomoz.org/chapter-4-basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development
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
-
Different content on different mobile browsers
Is it ok to run different html & different content on different mobile browsers even though the url is same. or the site can get penalize ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Questions about duplicate photo content?
I know that Google is a mystery, so I am not sure if there are answers to these questions, but I'm going to ask anyway! I recently realized that Google is not happy with duplicate photo content. I'm a photographer and have sold many photos in the past (but retained the rights for) that I am now using on my site. My recent revelations means that I'm now taking down all of these photos. So I've been reverse image searching all of my photos to see if I let anyone else use it first, and in the course of this I found out that there are many of my photos being used by other sites on the web. So my questions are: With photos that I used first and others have stolen, If I edit these photos (to add copyright info) and then re-upload them, will the sites that are using these images then get credit for using the original image first? If I have a photo on another one of my own sites and I take it down, can I safely use that photo on my main site, or will Google retain the knowledge that it's been used somewhere else first? If I sold a photo and it's being used on another site, can I safely use a different photo from the same series that is almost exactly the same? I am unclear what data from the photo Google is matching, and if they can tell the difference between photos that were taken a few seconds apart.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lina5000 -
A lot of news / Duplicate Content - what to do?
Hi All, I have a blog with a lot of content (news and pr messages), I want to move my blog to new domain. What is your recommendation? 1. Keep it as is. old articles -> 301 -> same article different URL
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPalmer
2. Remove all the duplicate content and create 301 from the old URL to my homepage.
3. Keep it as is, but add in the meta-tags NoIndex in duplicate articles. Thanks !0 -
How can a website have multiple pages of duplicate content - still rank?
Can you have a website with multiple pages of the exact same copy, (being different locations of a franchise business), and still be able to rank for each individual franchise? Is that possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OhYeahSteve0 -
How would you handle this duplicate content - noindex or canonical?
Hello Just trying look at how best to deal with this duplicated content. On our Canada holidays page we have a number of holidays listed (PAGE A)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateWaite
http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/north-america/canada/suggested-holidays.aspx We also have a more specific Arctic Canada holidays page with different listings (PAGE B)
http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/arctic-and-antarctica/arctic-canada/suggested-holidays.aspx Of the two, the Arctic Canada page (PAGE B) receives a far higher number of visitors from organic search. From a user perspective, people expect to see all holidays in Canada (PAGE A), including the Arctic based ones. We can tag these to appear on both, however it will mean that the PAGE B content will be duplicated on PAGE A. Would it be the best idea to set up a canonical link tag to stop this duplicate content causing an issue. Alternatively would it be best to no index PAGE A? Interested to see others thoughts. I've used this (Jan 2011 so quite old) article for reference in case anyone else enters this topic in search of information on a similar thing: Duplicate Content: Block, Redirect or Canonical - SEO Tips0 -
Category Pages For Distributing Authority But Not Creating Duplicate Content
I read this interesting moz guide: http://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt, which I think answered my question but I just want to make sure. I take it to mean that if I have category pages with nothing but duplicate content (lists of other pages (h1 title/on-page description and links to same) and that I still want the category pages to distribute their link authority to the individual pages, then I should leave the category pages in the site map and meta noindex them, rather than robots.txt them. Is that correct? Again, don't want the category pages to index or have a duplicate content issue, but do want the category pages to be crawled enough to distribute their link authority to individual pages. Given the scope of the site (thousands of pages and hundreds of categories), I just want to make sure I have that right. Up until my recent efforts on this, some of the category pages have been robot.txt'd out and still in the site map, while others (with different url structure) have been in the sitemap, but not robots.txt'd out. Thanks! Best.. Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
How do I best handle Duplicate Content on an IIS site using 301 redirects?
The crawl report for a site indicates the existence of both www and non-www content, which I am aware is duplicate. However, only the www pages are indexed**, which is throwing me off. There are not any 'no-index' tags on the non-www pages and nothing in robots.txt and I can't find a sitemap. I believe a 301 redirect from the non-www pages is what is in order. Is this accurate? I believe the site is built using asp.net on IIS as the pages end in .asp. (not very familiar to me) There are multiple versions of the homepage, including 'index.html' and 'default.asp.' Meta refresh tags are being used to point to 'default.asp'. What has been done: 1. I set the preferred domain to 'www' in Google's Webmaster Tools, as most links already point to www. 2. The Wordpress blog which sits in a /blog subdirectory has been set with rel="canonical" to point to the www version. What I have asked the programmer to do: 1. Add 301 redirects from the non-www pages to the www pages. 2. Set all versions of the homepage to redirect to www.site.org using 301 redirects as opposed to meta refresh tags. Have all bases been covered correctly? One more concern: I notice the canonical tags in the source code of the blog use a trailing slash - will this create a problem of inconsistency? (And why is rel="canonical" the standard for Wordpress SEO plugins while 301 redirects are preferred for SEO?) Thanks a million! **To clarify regarding the indexation of non-www pages: A search for 'site:site.org -inurl:www' returns only 7 pages without www which are all blog pages without content (Code 200, not 404 - maybe deleted or moved - which is perhaps another 301 redirect issue).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn0 -
Copying my Facebook content to website considered duplicate content?
I write career advice on Facebook on a daily basis. On my homepage users can see the most recent 4-5 feeds (using FB social media plugin). I am thinking to create a page on my website where visitors can see all my previous FB feeds. Would this be considered duplicate content if I copy paste the info, but if I use a Facebook social media plugin then it is not considered duplicate content? I am working on increasing content on my website and feel incorporating FB feeds would make sense. thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0