Duplicate page titles in SEOMoz
-
My on page reports are showing a good number of duplicate title tags, but they are all because of a url tracking parameter that tells us which link the visitor clicked on. For example, http://www.example.com/example-product.htm?ref=navside and http://www.example.com/example-product.htm are the same page, but are treated as to different urls in SEOMoz. This is creating "fake" number of duplicate page titles in my reports.
This has not been a problem with Google, but SEOMoz is treating it like this and it's confusing my data. Is there a way to specify this as a url parameter in the Moz software?
Or does anybody have another suggestion? Should I specify this in GWT and BWT?
-
The best way to handle this, for all crawlers including Google, Yahoo and Moz, is to make sure you have proper canonical tags on those URLs that point to the non-parameterized URL.
So http://www.example.com/example-product.htm?ref=navside will have a canonical that points to http://www.example.com/example-product.htm
-
My understanding is that the Moz crawlers should be checking the canonical, in which case it will ignore duplicate content and title tag issues. If you find this is not the case with your crawl, please let our help team know at help @ moz.com
-
No, Moz's tool won't check the canonical to see if that would ignore this.
-
Do you think that setting a canonical url tag might help fix this?
-
Hi Robert,
Yes, I'm sorry but you're overlooking something. Ignoring parameters is something you should do in regards to SEO. It won't stop Google Analytics tracking these parameters.
-
I'm not sure why I'd want to ask google to ignore those parameters... we're explicitly adding the ones that they suggested we use from here:
The issue that I'm having is that Moz analytics is showing duplicate pages as an issue to resolve when the only difference is that these params exist.
Am I overlooking something here?
-
Hi Robert,
I wouldn't handle this via robots.txt if you only want to do this for Rogerbot. The best way to tell Google to ignore your UTM parameters is via Google Webmaster Tools. Under Crawl > URL Parameters you've got the option to add parameters that don't change any of the content and are solely used for tracking purposes.
-
I'm having a similar issue. Is there an example of how to add this to the robots.txt file to ignore the utm stuff for RogerBot?
Our scenario is that we send out PDFs with links to pages on our site and those links have utm parameters included... and are showing up as duplicate content.
Thanks in advance,
Robby
-
I think this is the answer I was looking for... Yeah, GWT already has a bunch of our parameters added, and hasn't had a problem with this one. It's not showing these pages as duplicate like SEOMoz does.
Thanks guys!
-
Hi,
What you might want to do to get rid of this issues within SEOMoz is add the parameters to your robots.txt file and specifically target the user agent of SEOMoz: Rogerbot. This way SEOMoz won't crawl the links with this parameter and by doing that also won't warn you about these duplicate titles.
Hope this helps!
Btw. As James already mentioned I would also recommend to configure these parameters within Google Webmaster Tools.
-
You could set it up in GWT but it sounds like you are using utm tags on internal links so you can see which physical links on a page are driving clicks. If that's the case a cleaner solution is to upgrade your Google Analytics code for enhanced link attribution. I'm assuming you are using GA but if so this will allow you to see which links are driving which clicks and won't create tons of duplicate page titles in SEOmoz.
See link: http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2558867
Let me know if you have questions,
JS
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
-
Exact Keyword is Used in Page Title & Exact Keyword Used in Document Text at Least Once
Hi Folks, I have a page https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-training/itil-foundation-training/itil-foundation that grades with the 'On-Page Grader' as a B grade for the keyword 'itil foundation' but reports that there is no 'Exact Keyword is Used in Page Title' and 'Exact Keyword Used in Document Text at Least Once'. The thing is, it actually is but because of IP (intellectual property) rights we have to include a '®' (®) symbol when we mention the course title 'ITIL® Foundation'. Now I believe Google is smart enough to recognise that this symbol should not be included but it seems that for the specific criteria mentioned above, the MOZ bot isn't smart enough to recognise this, even though it recognises the keyword usage elsewhere. So my question is this. Would this constitute an issue in terms of ranking? Another question I have, is how significant are the gains with shorter URL's? For example, the URL to the page in question is: https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-training/itil-foundation-training/itil-foundation Would a URL such as below have a significant effect on SEO?: https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-foundation Thanks for your feedback.
Moz Pro | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Magento Dynamic Pages Being Indexed
Hi there, I have about 50k Moz medium priority errors in my Crawl Diagnostic report. The bulk of them are classified as "Temporary Redirect" problems. Then if you drill into those further, I can see that the problem urls all kinda are center around: mysite.com/catalogsearch/result.. mysite.com/wishlist.. mysite.com/catalog.. Is this something I should disallow in my Robstxt file? And if so how specific do I get with it.. Disallow /catalogsearch/result/?q= Will listing the /catalogsearch be enough to cover anything after it? thanks
Moz Pro | | Shop-Sq0 -
How Moz takes a page title is duplicate?
Suppose i have added suffix and prefix to each of my product (ex: i have two tittles like buy online t-shirt at abc.com & buy online poster at abc.com, so in this buy online and abc.com are suffix and prefix) so .. will it take these two page tittles as duplicates ?
Moz Pro | | vayush0 -
How reliable is SEOMOZ data?
I have been using the Mozbar data to locate Auth websites, basically the higher the DA/PA the better it is. If I then check the site out and they have good load times, lots of social sharing etc this makes it extra special and now a good site to try and get a link on. I found 3 blogs to guest post on which all have DA/PA 80+ some of the blogs have a PR7. Now this is great but what scares me is have I just wasted 3 guest posts because the data is incorrect. These blogs are run by 1 person and the kind of work involved to achieve those stats would be very heavy. Maybe this blogger has just hit the nail on the head with SEO and link building. Input anyone?
Moz Pro | | activitysuper0 -
"Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but sample pages are not related to page indicated with duplicate content
In the crawl diagnostics for my campaign, the duplicate content warnings have been increasing, but when I look at the sample pages that SEOMoz says have duplicate content, they are completely different pages from the page identified. They have different Titles, Meta Descriptions and HTML content and often are different types of pages, i.e. product page appearing as having duplicate content vs. a category page. Anyone know what could be causing this?
Moz Pro | | EBCeller0 -
SEOmoz Rank tracking
I think this tool is a bit off : ) This morning I checked my ranking for a keyword and every time I recheck it I see my results in a different place. I checked on word 5 times and got three different results. Is Google brocken or is the tracker doing its own thing? This is not the first time I am seeing this issue only today its really acting up. IMHO I think it would be best if the tool just says out of order 🙂 rather than 3, 10, 6 for one keyword phrase within ten minutes...
Moz Pro | | SEODinosaur0 -
Will canonical tag get rid of duplicate page title errors?
I have a directory on my website, paginated in groups of 10. On page 2 of the results, the title tag is the same as the first page, as it is on the 3rd page and so on. This is giving me duplicate page title errors. If i use rel=canonical tags on the subsequent pages and href the first page of my results, will my duplicate page title warnings go away? thanks.
Moz Pro | | fourthdimensioninc0