Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Duplicate title-tags with pagination and canonical
-
Some time back we implemented the Google recommendation for pagination (the rel="next/prev"). GWMT now reports 17K pages with duplicate title-tags (we have about 1,1m products on our site and about 50m pages indexed in Google)
As an example we have properties listed in various states and the category title would be "Properties for Sale in [state-name]".
A paginated search page or browsing a category (see also http://searchengineland.com/implementing-pagination-attributes-correctly-for-google-114970) would then include the following:
The title for each page is the same - so to avoid the duplicate title-tags issue, I would think one would have the following options:
- Ignore what Google says
- Change the canonical to http://www.site.com/property/state.html (which would then only show the first XX results)
- Append a page number to the title "Properties for Sale in [state-name] | Page XX"
- Have all paginated pages use noindex,follow - this would then result in no category page being indexed
Would you have the canonical point to the individual paginated page or the base page?
-
Dr. Pete,
Do you have any search/sort filters that may be spinning out other copies, beyond just the paginated series? That could be clouding the issue, and these things do get complicated. - How about this is the case? What would you recommend?
Gary
-
Since last week we have chosen to append the page number to the title. Let's see if/how GWMTs status changes.
I would think that the next possible flag would then be on the page-description on paginated pages
-
I suspect you're ok, then. I'd watch those GWT numbers, but unless you're seeing problems with indexation and ranking, then I'd just consider that a notice. I think you're handling it by the book, at least as well as currently possible with Google's changing and somewhat mixed signals on the subject.
-
Thanks for that answer. I am already using the pageNo in GWMT (as paginates). None of the searches spin out other copies - what I see in GWMT is only related to browsing through a product category and paginating.
-
Unfortunately, it can be really tough to tell if Google is honoring the rel=prev/next tags, but I've had gradually better luck with those tags this year. I honestly the GWT issue is a mistake on Google's part, and probably isn't a big deal. They do technically index all of the pages in the series, but the rel=prev/next tags should mitigate any ranking issues that could occur from near-duplicate content. You could add the page # to the title, but I doubt it would have any noticeable impact (other than possibly killing the GWT warning).
I would not canonical to the top page - that's specifically not recommended by Google and has fallen in disfavor over the past couple of years. Technically, you can canonical to a "View All" page, but that has its own issues (practically speaking - such as speed and usability).
Do you have any search/sort filters that may be spinning out other copies, beyond just the paginated series? That could be clouding the issue, and these things do get complicated.
I've had luck in the past with using META NOINDEX, FOLLOW on pages 2+ of pagination, but I've gradually switched to rel=prev/next. Google seems to be getting pickier about NOINDEX, and doesn't always follow the cues consistently. Unfortunately, this is true for all of the cues/tags these days.
Sorry, that's a very long way of saying that I suspect you're ok in this case, as long as the tags are properly implemented. You could tell GWT to ignore the page= parameter in parameter handling, but I'm honestly not sure what impact that has in conjunction with rel=prev/next. It might kill the warning, but the warning's just a warning.
-
I frequently use the page number in titles. It's not a bad solution where you want them all to get indexed.
Keep an eye on whether it affects CTR from the results though. I also like to ensure that there is always a link to the first page of results. This is useful for the user and also helps push more authority to that first page so that it is more likely to be the one that appears.
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 titles from hreflang variations
Hi, I am working on a large global site which has around 9 different language variations. We have setup the hreflang tags and referenced the corresponding content as follows: (We have not implemented a version X-default reference, as we felt it was not necessary) Using DeepCrawl and Search Console, we can see that these language variations are causing duplicate title issues. Many of them. My assumption was that the hreflang would have alleviated this issue and informed Google what is going on, however i wanted to see if anyone has any experience with this kind of thing before. It would be good to understand what the best practice approach is to deal with the problem. Is it even an issue at all, or just the tools being over-sensitive? Thank you in advance.
Technical SEO | | NickG-1230 -
Quick Fix to "Duplicate page without canonical tag"?
When we pull up Google Search Console, in the Index Coverage section, under the category of Excluded, there is a sub-category called ‘Duplicate page without canonical tag’. The majority of the 665 pages in that section are from a test environment. If we were to include in the robots.txt file, a wildcard to cover every URL that started with the particular root URL ("www.domain.com/host/"), could we eliminate the majority of these errors? That solution is not one of the 5 or 6 recommended solutions that the Google Search Console Help section text suggests. It seems like a simple effective solution. Are we missing something?
Technical SEO | | CREW-MARKETING1 -
Do Canonical Tags Pass Link Juice?
I have an ecommerce website where some pages link to a product page with a different URL. EXAMPLE: 1: /category/product1.html (not indexed by Google) with canonical pointing to product1.html Other page link to the product like below. 2: product1.html (indexed by Google) Now the question is, does 1: pass any link juice to product1.html or not? Is it worth to change everything and link only to one URL? My site is running on Magento!
Technical SEO | | bill3690 -
Duplicate Page Content and Titles from Weebly Blog
Anyone familiar with Weebly that can offer some suggestions? I ran a crawl diagnostics on my site and have some high priority issues that appear to stem from Weebly Blog posts. There are several of them and it appears that the post is being counted as "page content" on the main blog feed and then again when it is tagged to a category. I hope this makes sense, I am new to SEO and this is really confusing. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CRMI0 -
Use of title tags on divs for SEO purposes
Hello community, I recently was asked by a client to analyze a website of a competitor. I did was he asked me to do but when I looked at the source code of the website I found this code: I changed the exact words into something for privacy reasons, but I never looked at a code like this.
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing
Using a div for an anchor I get but adding a title tag to the div? I never seen that before. Title tags on anchors, yes, using images in divs as background and then adding a title??? Does anyone have any experience with a code like this and if you do how does this impact rankings? Does it impact rankings at all and does anybody know of any correlation between the two? Looking forward for your responses. Regards Jarno0 -
Do canonical tags pass all of the link juice onto the URL they point to?
I have an ecommerce website where the category pages have various sorting and paging options which add a suffix to the URLs. My site is setup so the root category URL, domain.com/category-name, has a canonical tag pointing to domain.com/category-name/page1/price however all links, both interner & external, point to the former (i.e. domain.com/category-name). I would like to know whether all of the link juice is being passed onto the canonical tag URL? Otherwise should I change the canonical tag to point the other way? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tjhossy0 -
Alt and Title Attributes in Anchor Tags
Does it hurt to use alt and title attributes inside an anchor tag? Example: view my website article
Technical SEO | | donationtown0 -
Duplicate canonical URLs in WordPress
Hi everyone, I'm driving myself insane trying to figure this one out and am hoping someone has more technical chops than I do. Here's the situation... I'm getting duplicate canonical tags on my pages and posts, one is inside of the WordPress SEO (plugin) commented section, and the other is elsewhere in the header. I am running the latest version of WordPress 3.1.3 and the Genesis framework. After doing some testing and adding the following filters to my functions.php: <code>remove_action('wp_head', 'genesis_canonical'); remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');</code> ... what I get is this: With the plugin active + NO "remove action" - duplicate canonical tags
Technical SEO | | robertdempsey
With the plugin disabled + NO "remove action" - a single canonical tag
With the plugin disabled + A "remove action" - no canonical tag I have tried using only one of these remove_actions at a time, and then combining them both. Regardless, as long as I have the plugin active I get duplicate canonical tags. Is this a bug in the plugin, perhaps somehow enabling the canonical functionality of WordPress? Thanks for your help everyone. Robert Dempsey0