If it's not in Webmaster Tools, is it Duplicate Title
-
I am showing a lot of errors in my SEOmoz reports for duplicate content and duplicate titles, many of which appear to be related to capitalization vs non-capitalization in the URL.
Case in point, if a URL contains a lower character, such as:
http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/distinct-microstructure-i
as opposed to the same URL having an upper character in the structure:
http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/distinct-microstructure-I
I am finding that some of the internal links on the site use the former structure and other links use the latter structure. These show as duplicate title/content in the SEOmoz reports, but they don't appear as duplicate titles in Webmaster Tools.
My question is, should I try to work with our developers to create a script to change all of the content with cap letters in the destination links internally on the site, or is this a non-issue since it doesn't appear in Webmaster Tools?
-
Hello Darin,
Typically search engines do a very good job of figuring out this particular issue. However, you may have a problem because the rel canonical tags are "self referencing". This means that the lower case version says "I'm the canonical!" and the upper case version says "No, I'm the canonical!"
If your developers can force the rel canonical tags to be all lower case URLs (assuming that's what you want to go with as the canonical version) it should take care of any potential issues here. If they want to go ahead and update all internal links to make them lower-case as well it wouldn't hurt. Keep in mind their time and if they could be using it for more important matters that would have a better ROI.
Summary: Fix the rel canonical tag issue by choosing one case or the other for that tag. Consider fixing internal links, as you suggested, if it isn't too time intensive verse other current projects, or at least add it to their plates as something to do in the future when they have time.
-
Well, if you type:
inurl:http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/ Distinct Microstructure I
In Google you won't see any duplicate or filtered results for the capitalized vs non capitalized version. However, it is best practice to have one single URL per page for link equity reasons. I'm not entirely sure what the 'correct' answer here is, but I'd go for one single URL if the fix isn't too resource intensive. A rel=canonical might be the best option here since some of the URLs might have gathered backlinks over time.
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
-
Can't support IE 7,8,9, 10\. Can we redirect them to another page that's optimized for those browsers so that we can have our site work on modern browers while still providing a destination of IE browsers?
Hi, Our site can't support IE 7,8,9, 10. Can we redirect them to another page that's optimized for those browsers so that we can have our site work on modern broswers while still providing a destination of IE browsers? Would their be an SEO penalty? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dspete0 -
Canonical URL's For Two Domains
We have two websites, one we use for Google PPC (website 1) and one (website 2) we use for everything else. The reason is we are in an industry that Google Adwords doesn't like, so we built a whole other website that removes the product descriptions as Google Adwords doesn't approve of many of them (nutrition). Right now we have that Google Adwords approved website (website 1) no-index/no-follow because we didn't want to run into potential duplicate content issues in free search, but the issue is we can't submit it to Google Shopping...as they require it to be indexable. Do you think removing the no-index/no-follow from that website 1 and adding canonical URL's pointing to website 2 would resolve this issue (being able to submit it to Google Shopping) and not cause any problems with duplicate content? I was thinking of adding the canonical tag to all pages of website 1 and point it to website 2. Does that make sense? Do you think that would work?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vetofunk0 -
What's wrong with the algorithm?
Is it possible that Google is penalising a specific page and in the same time it shows unrelated page in the search results? "rent luxury car florence" shows https://lurento.com/city/munich/on the 2nd page (that's Munich, Germany) and in the same time completely ignores the related page https://lurento.com/city/florence/ How I can figure out if the specific page has been trashed and why? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lurento.com
Mike0 -
Help, no organic traffic recovery after new site launch (it's been 6 months)!
I worked with a team of developers to launch a new site back in March. I was (and still am) in charge of SEO for the site, including combining 4 sites into 1. I made sure 301 redirects were in place to combine the sites and pretty much every SEO tactic I can think of to make sure the site would maintain rankings following launch. However, here we are 6 months later and YoY numbers are down -70% on average for organic traffic. Anyone mind taking a look at http://www.guestguidepublications.com and seeing if there's a glaring mistake I'm missing?!?!?! Thanks ahead of time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Annapurna-Digital1 -
Webmaster tools: which one do you use? Yandex Yay or Nay?
I usually verify websites on Google and Bing Webmaster. How important it is to verify on Yandex Webmaster if Russia is not one of the targeted locations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | selectitaly0 -
Why is my client's site not ranking anymore? Like big time!
Ok, I'm reaching out to all of you Moz'rs for some help with this one. My client's site has dropped off the face of google in a real short period of time. It went from page 1 (avg rank 3 to page 6 (avg rank 50) and below in the matter of 2 weeks. Here's some facts: 1. DA is a 22 and homepage PA is a 31. It outranks all other sites in its competitive set. 2. The homepage used to be the page that displays for keyword searches, now its the FAQ page, which has a lower PA of 23. Why has the home page seemingly vaporized? And, why is the FAQ showing as the first result? What should I start checking. I feel paralyzed, not sure where to start. More info: a. There are no alerts present in Webmaster Tools. b. For some reason the homepage (domain.com) was 301'd to domain.com/home.html. Domain.com is indexed by Google, however, domain.com/home.html is not. If this is the issue, what is the best way to handle it? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhoadesjohn1 -
Help needed on Google Webmaster tools
Hi I notice that one of my oldest sites , even if I put hundred of backlinks (good or bad) google webmaster tools never index more like 20 per day. Why is this happening? They control it? I mean they dont let them all to get indexed and they take it slowly slowly? If I put just 20 per day is the ideal link building amount? Thnk you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
Is there any negative SEO effect of having comma's in URL's?
Hello, I have a client who has a large ecommerce website. Some category names have been created with comma's in - which has meant that their software has automatically generated URL's with comma's in for every page that comes beneath the category in the site hierarchy. eg. 1 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/ eg. 2 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/action-and-adventure/ etc... I know that URL's with comma's in look a bit ugly! But is there 'any' SEO reason why URL's with comma's in are any less effective? Kind Regs, RB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichBestSEO0