Craw Diagnostics Questions
-
SEO Moz is reporting that I have 50+ pages with a duplicate content issue based on this URL: http://www. f r e d aldous.co.uk/art-shop/art-supplies/art-canvas.html?manufacturer=178
But I have included this tag in the source: rel="canonical" href="http://www.f r e daldous.co.uk/art-shop/art-supplies/art-canvas.html"/>
(I have purposefully added white space to the URLs in this message as I'm not sure about the rules for posting links here)
I though this "canonical" tag prevented the duplicate content being indexed?
is the reporting by SEOMoz wrong or being over cautious?
-
Hi Niall,
This isn't a case of the canonical tag being properly applied, but a case where two or more pages are so similar in code that they are setting off the SEOmoz duplicate content flags.
First of all, those pages look different to us humans. But the SEOmoz web app uses a similarity threshold of 95% of the html code. This takes everything on the page, both hidden and visible into account.
In this case, it's counting all of the navigation and sidebar as well, which is significant. What's left of the unique content - the part that matters, makes up less than 5% of the code.
Here's a tool you can use to check the similarity: http://www.duplicatecontent.net/
I ran the pages through a couple of tools which showed 98% HTML similarity. And 99% text similarity.
For perspective, take a look at Google's cached versions of one of these pages. This is how googlebot sees the page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mdybPKIjOxUJ:www.fredaldous.co.uk/craft-shop/general-crafts.html+http://www.fredaldous.co.uk/craft-shop/general-crafts.html&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1
That, as we say, is a lot of links!
Since Panda, when I see a site with this many navigation links, I usually advise them to restructure their site architecture into more of a Pyramid shape, so that you reduce the overall navigation on each page.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
It claims that this is one of the duplicate URLS:
http://www.f r e daldous.co.uk/photo-gift/design-led-gifts.html?manufacturer=436
Now I am confused as page is no where near duplicate content of the URL I posted 1st.
Can anyone explain this?
-
Helo Niall,
It seems that you have inserted the rel="canonical" href= in the correct spot. I think the software is giving you the potentials which is always a bonus precaution. I really don't want to make a premature determination without knowing which 50 pages are showing up as duplicate. A deeper look will allow me to give you a more accurate response.
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
-
Subdomain Ranking Question
Hi All - Quick question that I think I know the answer to, but I feel like I've been going around in circles a bit. My client is launching a new product and wants us to build a microsite for it (product.clientname.com). My client really dislikes their brand website, and wants to use paid media to push their audience to this new microsite. However, they also said want it to rank well organically. I feel uneasy about this, because of the subdomain vs. subfolder argument. I believe that the product will also be listed/featured on their main brand website. What is the best way forward? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AinsleyAgency0 -
Question about Unpredictability with the Knowledge panel showing up for the same search
The people in my client's office get different results when they search for their company name in Google. For example one person ALWAYS gets the right rail knowledge panel with full details about the company while her boss NEVER sees it. They are both on desktop search. Rosemary
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Question on URL wording and structure best practices
We're mapping out some URL structures and trying to figure out what would be best for separating folders for articles and videos regarding wording in the folder say: www.site.com/category/article/name-of-article/id#/ ---- www.site.com/category/video/name-of-video/id#/ vs. www.site.com/category/a/name-of-article/id#/ ---- www.site.com/category/v/name-of-video/id#/ Second option came about the ''shorter is better' way of thinking. Downside I see to it is if the link would be copied and pasted somewhere probably would be best for a user to make it clear they are clicking into an article or a video, don't think just an 'a' or a 'v' would be very telling in that scenario. Would it be better for search engines to make it clearer with the whole word in there? Any other pros and cons to each? Not sure what's the best route here.
Technical SEO | | SBRMarketing0 -
One simply question about disavow tool
Hi Guys, my website is under a negative seo attack. One simply question about disavow tools. Everyday I have to upload a file with the new bad backlinks (domains). The fact is that when I try to upload a new disavow report the tool continue to show me the file of the day before and If I upload the new file it replace the old one. So.... what I have to do? 1. Upload a new file with the backlink domain of the day that replace the old one
Technical SEO | | Italianseolover
2. Or upload a new file with the old backlinks plus the new one? Thank you very much.0 -
SEO question: Need help on rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
Hi all, we have webcontent in 3 languages (official belgian yellow pages), we use a separate domain per language, these are also our brands.
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories
ex. for the restaurant Wagamamahttp://www.goudengids.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to nl-be
http://www.pagesdor.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to fr-be
http://www.pagesdor.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to en-be The trouble is that sometimes I see the incorrect urls appearing when doing a search in google, ex. when searching on google.be (dutch=nederlands=nl-be) I see the www.pagesdor.be version appearing (french) I was trying to find a fix for this within https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=nl , but this only seems to apply to websites which use SUBdomains for language purposes. I'm not sure if can work for DOMAINS. Can anyone help me out? Kind regards0 -
Google Knowledge Graph related question
I have a client who is facing age discrimination in the film industry. (Big surprise there.) The problem is, when you type in his name, Google's new Knowledge Graph displays a brief bio about him to the right of the search results. This bio snippet includes his year of birth. Wikipedia is credited as the source for the bio information about him, and yet, his Wikipedia entry doesn't include his age or birth date. Neither does his iMDb bio. So the question is, How can he figure out where Google is getting that birthdate from? He wants to try and remove it, not falsify it. Thanks for any help you can offer.
Technical SEO | | JamesAMartin0 -
Question about content on ecommerce pages.
Long time ago we hired a seo company to do seo in our website and one of the things they did is that they wrote long text on the category pages of our products. Example here: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/refurbished-printers/wide-format-laser-refurbished-printers Now my marketing person is saying that if its possible to put the text below the items, technically I will find out how to do it, but from your seo experience, is it good or bad? What about if we short those texts to one paragraph only? Thanks
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Pagination question
I have a website http://www.example.com with pagination series starting with page1.html upto page10.html. With backlinks to some of the pages ( page1.html, page2.html----page7.html). If i include rel="next" and rel="prev" on page1.html to page10.html pages. Will value of those links will be transfered to http://www.example.com This is what i interpret from http://bit.ly/mUOrn2 Am i right ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050