Duplicate content from category pages?
-
I have an ecommerce store with different categories for my products. Some products do appear in more than one category, is that an issue even if you end up on the same product page/link?
Also, I have a "show all products" category, which I believe creates duplicate content too?
What is your take on this? What can I do to solve this? Is it even an issue of duplicate content?
All answers are very much appreciated!
-
Hey all, I was reading this post and I have a slightly different situation wherein my products are appearing in different categories as duplicate entries and also as different urls, what are the implications then?
-
Yeah, I think Nakul is on the right track here. You don't have to worry about the product pages themselves, because the categories converge on one URL. The search pages could be considered "thin" content, but it really depends on the scope of pages relative to your overall site. Rel=prev/next is a good bet for reducing your exposure (and it's low risk), but the solution depends a bit on the situation.
It's not a high-risk situation - it's more a matter of diluting your index (potentially) with hundreds or thousands of search pages that Google may not find very valuable.
-
Ohh sorry.. In that case, you do not need to implement canonical code .. sorry my bad ..:(
_So, what I understand is that you are concerned about boiler plate template and what I personally feel is that you do not need to worry about them because this is not going to affect the visibility of your website in one way or the other. _
-
It's only the product name in the category listings. Great! Thanks a lot Nakul.
-
Daniel, are you displaying product description on these category pages ? If not, if it's just the product name, you are fine.
-
Alright. My website is just a few months old and I haven't been that active promoting it or improving it (until just a few weeks back now).
My domain authority I would say is very low, maybe you know a way I can find out exactly what it is?
We have less than 200 products on the site, and as stated earlier 3-4 out of 10 is visible in more than one category (duplicated).
Does this give you any indication on my situation, to be able to give me advice on what to do to resolve this?
Once again, thank you for your patience!
-
Deb, Daniel's case does not sound like having multiple URLs of the same Product. It's just that the same product is listed under multiple categories. So depending upon the percentage of duplicate products vs the unique products listed in a category, it may or may not be okay. Also, this may vary based on how big your website is, unique content on the category level pages as well as the overall domain authority.
-
Daniel
I am guessing you have around 200 products exposed in approximately 18 categories, however there may be some overlap in the products within the categories, but the product URLs themselves are unique, so there is no content duplication between the product URLs themselves. You are just checking to make sure if a Red Widget Listed under Category A as well as Category B is okay. With your ratio being 3-4 out of 10, I won't be concerned.
If however this increases to over 50%, I'd be concerned in having 20 category pages being duplicate of each other by over 50%. The closer to 100%, the higher the risk. The closer to 0%, the lower the risk.
And it's just the product name you display on the category level page, not the product description right ? If yes, I'd say you are good to go. Don't worry about it too much at this point.
I hope this helps.
-
So if it is the same URL to the product page in both categories it is visible, it's no problem at all?
For example:
Product X is visible in two categories, category Y and category Z.
I first visit the product through category Y, and the URL is: www.example.com/productx/1
And I then visit the same product, but this time through category Z. The URL for the product page is exactly the same: www.example.com/productx/1And there is no sign of redirect, as I should see a reload of the page changing the url when I first land on the product page, right?
Would be great if you could get give green light! Or tell me what to do if there still is a problem after all. Thanks!
-
if the same product is available two or more different paths/URLs, you need to set the preferred version as canonical. This will fix the issue of internal duplicate content. -
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
Make sure that you are adding link reference of only canonical version of the URLs in the XML sitemap.
-
As I read the posts you suggested, I realized I was not clear enough when I wrote my question.
What the "show all" means on my page is that it shows ALL products from ALL categories in a new/separate category called "show all".
So it is NOT as in the example on google webmasters blogpost, that it is a "show all" alternative in every single category showing that category products on one page.
Hope I was more clear this time! Thank you for your patience.
-
Thanks for the response Nakul!
I would say that 3-4 out of 10 products are shown in more than one category. As for how many categories I have, there is 18 unique categories (and then you have the "show all" on top of that).
Our domain authority is pretty low so far (working on it ;). Our site was launched just a couple months back and we havn't been that active with improving it until just a few weeks back.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "page 1, page 2 and a show all"? Nor, "Is it to land on Page 1 or the View-All page". What page are you talking about when you say Page 1?
If I understand you correctly, we do have several pages of products under the "show all" category (i.e. it's not displaying all products in one single long page).
The products in the "show all" category are exact duplicates from the ones in the specific categories. The products in "show all" are unique from each other though.
You are very helpful! I'm just trying to understand more clearly.
-
How widespread is your "products" appearing in multiple categories ? ARe you talking about 8 out of 10 products in the category duplicate / very similar to the same collection appearing in the other category ? It really depends how many categories you have, how many products, how deep this is compared to what other unique data you have on the page combined with your domain authority etc.
As for Show All, do you also have page 1, page 2 and a show all ? Do they have unique page titles and descriptions ? What do you want to appear in the SERPS for the users ? So if I search on Google for Red Widgets, what's a good experience for me. Is it to land on Page 1 or the View-All page ? Based on what you want to do, I suggest you look at:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html
I 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
-
Website and seo for categories and pages
I have a website with a number of specific locations listed in a directory. The locations are in categories but i also have several pages with the same titles and descriptions. Will this be a problem when it comes to seo
On-Page Optimization | | twiguins0 -
How to Handle duplicate pages/titles in Wordpress
The wordpress blog causes problems with page titles. If you go to the second page of blog posts it there's a different URL but with the same page title. for example: page 1: site/blog page 2: site/blog/page/2 Each page gets flagged for duplicate page titles. Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
On-Page Optimization | | heymarshall1 -
Content on ecommerce categories - good or bad?
We have a case with a client where they previously had content on top of their most important ecommerce categories. The content was well integrated and should in my opinion enhance the category experience, but after doing some A/B testing they proved to only decrease the conversion rates when sending traffic directly to those categories. Around that topic I have two questions: Is it a bad thing to put the content BELOW the categories? I need examples of categories where content and products are very well integrated and enhances the category experience - any tips?
On-Page Optimization | | Inevo0 -
I have a lot of internal duplicate content as intros to a series of articles, is this bad?
On a site that I'm working on there is a series of posts with the same beginning to their titles. All of the titles start with Christ's Church ("Mormons"): And then about the first four paragraphs of all these posts is exactly the same, it is just explaining this series of posts. I'll link to a couple of examples so you know what I'm talking about. I know there are several other problems with these posts/site 🙂 but I am specifically curious about the partial duplicate title and the first few paragraphs being duplicate. http://www.mormonchurch.com/3259/christs-church-mormons-helping-out-a-friend http://www.mormonchurch.com/2969/christs-church-mormon-happiness-is-found-only-through-christ There are about 30 posts similar to these. Thank you, I look forward to your responses.
On-Page Optimization | | ThridHour1 -
WordPress and category/subcategory landing pages
Hey, Here's my situation. I'm building a WordPress blog for product reviews of a certain niche. Current category setup is 4 main categories with 4-8 subcategories each. Each subcategory has a unique description that will help it become a landing page for certain keywords, after which it lists the posts from that subcategory. The posts will always be assigned to a sub-category, never to a main category. My issue is what to do with the main categories. They're fairly general so they're not really targeting any keywords, and don't have any unique descriptions attached to them. I was thinking of choosing between three options on designing the main category pages: List the subcategories + normal posts loop that bring the latest posts from the subcategories (may create a lot of duplicate content since the subcategory pages are also listing their posts) List only the subcategories (+ maybe just the latest post from each subcategory) Don't link the main categories at all, instead only use them to create dropdowns for the subcategories So, what would you choose, and why?
On-Page Optimization | | mihaiaperghis0 -
Duplicate page title - blogs
Hope someone can help me, I am a total SEO noivce so please be gentle. My first report shows that I have duplicate page titles. I have been through and changed all of these so they are different and after my latest crawl they are still showing as duplicates. I am wondering if this is because it;s a blog, here is one of the duplicates: http://www.cottagesoapcompany.co.uk/blog/?row=1 Hope you can help!
On-Page Optimization | | emmamoulden0 -
Should I worry about duplicate titles on pages where there is paginated content?
LivingThere.com is a real estate search site and many of our content pages are "search result" - ish in that a page often provides all the listings that are available and this may go on for multiple pages. For example, this is a primary page about a building: http://livingthere.com/building/31308-Cocoa-Exchange Because of the number of listings, the listings paginate to a second page: http://livingthere.com/building/31308-Cocoa-Exchange?MListings_page=2 Both pages have the same Page Title. Is this a concern? If so is there a "best practice" for giving paginated content different titles? Thanks! Nate
On-Page Optimization | | nate1230 -
How do you see a list of URLs with duplicate page titles?
When looking at the Duplicate Page Title report, the Other URLs column has various numbers that presumably indicate the number of pages that share the same title. When I click on one of these numbers, say a URL that shows 4 in that column, the next page reports "No sample duplicate URLs to report". Why isn't it showing me the other 3 URLs with the same page title?
On-Page Optimization | | jkenyon0