Duplicate content with same URL?
-
SEOmoz is saying that I have duplicate content on:
The only difference I see in the URL is that the "content.asp" is capitalized in the second URL.
Should I be worried about this or is this an issue with the SEOmoz crawl?
Thanks for any help.
Mike
-
I am not using a rewrite rule yet -- I was asking if there is one that would resolve this issue.
-
Are you specifying the URL rewrite rule at the page level, or in your .htaccess? I had a similar issue once on a WordPress Multisite install that was rewriting
example.com/site2 -> site2.com
And:
example.com/site3 -> site3.comThe issue wasn't "real" in that the users' browsers were moving to the preferred URLs specified in the HTTP headers, but our crawl tests were a nightmare of non-existent files much like yours. Rel="canonical" will help in that case to avoid penalties, but won't do any favors for page rank or indexation. I believe our developers created some additional page-level rewrites to deal with the phantom pages created in the crawl, but alas, I'm not sure what the details were.
You might post in a new thread or reach out to Chris Abernethy directly, he's far savvier with PHP than I am.
-
I have a similar problem, and I couldn't see a solution on the site that your link refers to. Maybe you can help?
In both SEOmoz reports and GWT I get duplicate meta descriptions and/or duplicate title tags on pages that do not physically (or logically) exist. I'm not talking about dynamically generated URLs. What I see is for a given page, several other appended pages that have no relationship to the first, like this:
/realpage1.php/anotherrealpage1.html
/realpage1.php/adifferentrealpage2.html
/realpage1.php/anotherrealpage3.php
/realpage1.php/directory/realpage4.htmlPerhaps related to this issue, I discovered that if a trailing slash is entered after any URL typed into the browser (other than the home page), our custom 404 page appears, but with no CSS styling or active javascript.
I have been wondering if a rewrite rule that eliminates trailing slashes would work, but then it would never display a sub-directory's default index page, right?
I've searched all over for some help with this, to no avail. Any help will be much appreciated.
-
Modern search engines won't penalize you for this, but you may lose link juice if your content has multiple URLs and each is receiving links. Best practice is to set up a few simple PHP mod_rewrite rules in your .htaccess for basic URL display issues (enforce trailing backslash, redirect to/away from www, etc.), as well as to declare your preferred URL in the HTML of each page using this handy .
Here's a great tutorial how to force lower-case URLs written by a fellow Mozzer (props, Chris! It's how I learned...), and here's 10 other useful mod_rewrites to add to your repertoire.
-
You sir are a gentleman and a scholar.
Thanks for your help Matt.
-
Use canonicalization to resolve this common duplicate content issue.
You need to place the canonical tag pointing to your preferred URL.
See this SeoMoz guide on how to do it -
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content
See
Rel="canonical"
this actually uses the example of capitalization and one page appearing as three to search engines...
Hope this helps!
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
-
50 Duplicate URLS, but not the same
Hi According to my latest site crawl, many of my pages are showing up to 50 duplicate urls. However this isn't the case in real life. http://www.fortusgroup.com.au/browse-products/rubber-tracks/excavator-rubber-tracks/hitachi/ex-33mu.html is showing 31 duplicate URL. Examples include: http://www.fortusgroup.com.au/browse-products/rubber-tracks/excavator-rubber-tracks/parts/x430.html
Technical SEO | | JDadd
http://www.fortusgroup.com.au/browse-products/rubber-tracks/excavator-rubber-tracks/case/cx-75sr.html Obviously these URL's are very similar and I know that Moz judges URLs by 90% of their similarity, but is this affecting my actual raking on google? If so, what can I do? This pages are also very similar in code and content, so they are also showing as duplicate content etc as well. Worried that this is having an affect on my SERP rankings, as this pages arent ranking particularly well. Thanks, Ellie0 -
Content Duplication and Canonical Tag settings
Hi all, I have a question regarding content duplication.My site has posted one fresh content in the article section and set canonical in the same page for avoiding content duplication._But another webmaster has taken my post and posted the same in his site with canonical as his site url. They have not given to original source as well._May I know how Google will consider these two pages. Which site will be affected with content duplication by Google and how can I solve this issue?If two sites put canonical tags in there own pages for the same content how the search engine will find the original site which posted fresh content. How can we avoid content duplication in this case?
Technical SEO | | zco_seo0 -
Url rewrites / shortcuts - Are they considered duplicate content?
When creating a url rewrite or shortcut, does this create duplicate content issues? split your rankings / authority with google/search engines? Scenario 1 wwwlwhatthehellisahoneybooboo.com/dqotd/ -> www.whatthehellisahoneybooboo.com/08/12/2012/deep-questions-of-the-day.html Scenario 2 bitly.com/hbb -> www.whatthehellisahoneybooboo.com/08/12/2012/deep-questions-of-the-day.html (or to make it more compicated...directs to the above mentioned scenario 1 url rewrite) www.whatthehellisahoneybooboo.com/dqotd/ *note well- there's no server side access so mentions of optimizing .htacess are useless in this situation. To be clear, I'm only referring to rewrites, not redirects...just trying to understand the implications of rewrites. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | seosquared0 -
I am trying to correct error report of duplicate page content. However I am unable to find in over 100 blogs the page which contains similar content to the page SEOmoz reported as having similar content is my only option to just dlete the blog page?
I am trying to correct duplicate content. However SEOmoz only reports and shows the page of duplicate content. I have 5 years worth of blogs and cannot find the duplicate page. Is my only option to just delete the page to improve my rankings. Brooke
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
How damaging is duplicate content in a forum?
Hey all; I hunted around for this in previous questions in the Q&A and didn't see anything. I'm just coming back to SEO after a few years out of the field and am preparing recommendations for our web dev team. We use a custom-coded software for our forums, and it creates a giant swathe of duplicate content, as each post has its own link. For example: domain.com/forum/post_topic domain.com/forum/post_topic/post1 domain.com/forum/post_topic/post2 ...and so on. However, since every page of the forum defaults to showing 20 posts, that means that every single forum thread that's 20 posts long has 21 different pages with identical content. Now, our forum is all user-generated content and is not generally a source of much inbound traffic--with occasional exceptions--but I was curious if having a mess of duplicate content in our forums could damage our ability to rate well in a different directory of the site. I've heard that Panda is really cracking down on duplicate content, and last time I was current on SEO trends, rel="canonical" was the hot new thing that everyone was talking about, so I've got a lot of catching up to do. Any guidance from the community would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | TheEnigmaticT0 -
Noindex duplicate content penalty?
We know that google now gives a penalty to a whole duplicate if it finds content it doesn't like or is duplicate content, but has anyone experienced a penalty from having duplicate content on their site which they have added noindex to? Would google still apply the penalty to the overall quality of the site even though they have been told to basically ignore the duplicate bit. Reason for asking is that I am looking to add a forum to one of my websites and no one likes a new forum. I have a script which can populate it with thousands of questions and answers pulled direct from Yahoo Answers. Obviously the forum wil be 100% duplicate content but I do not want it to rank for anyway anyway so if I noindex the forum pages hopefully it will not damage the rest of the site. In time, as the forum grows, all the duplicate posts will be deleted but it's hard to get people to use an empty forum so need to 'trick' them into thinking the section is very busy.
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Query string in url - duplicate content?
Hi everyone I would appreciate some advice on the following. I have a page which has some nice content on but it also has a search functionality. When a search is run a querystrong is run. So i will get something like mypage.php?id=20 etc. With many different url potentials, will each query string be seen as a different page? If so i don't want duplicate content. So am i best putting canonical tags in the head tags on mypage.php ? to avoid Google seeing potential duplicate content. Many thanks for all your advice.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Using robots.txt to deal with duplicate content
I have 2 sites with duplicate content issues. One is a wordpress blog. The other is a store (Pinnacle Cart). I cannot edit the canonical tag on either site. In this case, should I use robots.txt to eliminate the duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | bhsiao0