Is SeoMOZ Crawl Diagnostics wrong here?
-
We've been getting a ton of critical errors (about 80,000) in SeoMoz' Crawl Diagnostics saying we have duplicate content in our client's E-commerce site. Some of the errors are correct, but a lot of the pages are variations like:
www.example.com/productlist?page=1
www.example.com/productlist?page=2
However, in our source code we have used rel="prev" and rel="next" so in my opinion we should be alright.
Would love to hear from you if we have made a mistake or if it is an error in SeoMoz.
Here's a full paste of the script:
-
Just a minor clarification - you can use both rel=prev/next and rel=canonical, IF you have something like search filters. Then, the canonical would point to the unfiltered current page and the rel=prev/next would point to the filtered paginated pages. Yeah, I know, that made a lot of sense. Let's say your page is:
http://example.com/stuff?page=2&sort=price
...then you might have
It's more than a little confusing.
Definitely check out that JavaScript issue, though - it might be that bots aren't seeing what people are seeing, and that could be very dangerous.
-
Hi,
In regards the rel=next you are absolutely right, I must have overlooked it or just searched for the prev tag. So yes as far as proper implementation of the prev/next in that respect it is correct and please ignore that last part of my first post!
Turning of javascript is instructive to see all those tags on their individual page and helps clarify what exactly is being outputted and when without the dynamic loading, providing you don't miss a rel=next tag that is really there
-
Hi Lynn,
Thank you very much for your answer / analysis! As you said "It is a bit confusing" and I will just read your answer a couple of times...
I will grant your answer "Good answer" for you thorough analysis! I think it is spot on with the double "next/prev" and "rel=can" tags. I do have one remark. You said: When I turn off javescript, I get this:
In my opinion this is alright, because it shouldn't have a "prev" as this is the initial page.
-
Hi,
I had a look at what I assume is the site and I think you have a combination of things going on that is likely causing confusion (to you, to the moz bot, probably to google too!)
Firstly, it is not recommended to use rel prev/next and rel canonical on the same page. With that what you are effectively doing is only indexing the first page of the results since all the other pages rel canonical back to the first one. If you have a 'view all' type page then you could rel canonical all of the paginated pages back to this one and you would not need to use the prev/next tags at all. It is also possible that your use of relative canonical links in combination with the above is also causing confusion, usually best to use absolute urls if possible.
Beyond that, the site dynamically loads more products as you scroll down the page which also results in the url changing to hoeretelefon/? for ALL the pages. If that is a problem or not depends on how it is coded and how the google and seomoz bots are deciding to parse the page, but it certainly adds another potential area of complexity to the issue.
Lastly, if you browse the site with javascript turned off you can see something odd in that the initial page /elektronik/baerbar-lyd/hoeretelefon has no prev/next OR canonical tag but has a link to /elektronik/baerbar-lyd/hoeretelefon?page=1 on which you find prev/next and canonicals back to the non paginated version. So you are basically skipping the pagination setup that goes from the original to the page=1 (but also giving a canonical back to the original page).
Phew! It is a bit confusing. I would recommend deciding on if you want to go with prev/next or canonical in the first place and take it from there. I would think that if you have the ability to canonical to a 'see all products page' then this might be the best way to go since it should theoretically take care of any issues the dynamic loading is causing also.
Hope that 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
-
Crawl Report Re-direct Notice?
Just trying to understand if this is bad or not. The crawl report has picked up that my website is redirecting (301) from http://mysite.com to http://www.mysite.com - under Crawl Notices (blue section). Is this the wrong way to do it as we wanted the www domain version? Is that why SEOMoz has flagged it ?
Moz Pro | | Ubique0 -
Rogerbot did not crawl my site ! What might be the problem?
When I saw the new crawl for my site I wondered why there are no errors, no warning and 0 notices anymore. Then I saw that only 1 page was crawled. There are no Error Messages or webmasters Tools also did not report anything about crawling problems. What might be the problem? thanks for any tips!
Moz Pro | | inlinear
Holger rogerbot-did-not-crawl.PNG0 -
How do I force a crawl?
In the campaign overview it reads that 0 pages were crawled. Also got an email saying that a comprehensive audit will be done in 7 days. But the 'crawl in progress' wheel disappeared. I think it stopped, and I need to submit that report to substantiate buying the tool! How do I force a crawl?
Moz Pro | | ilhaam0 -
Crawl Diagnostics Update
I have corrected some errors in my SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostics, however the errors are still showing. It says a crawl has happen since. Any idea's why?
Moz Pro | | petewinter0 -
Seomoz bar: No Follow and Robots.txt
Should the Mozbar pickup 'nofollow" links that are handled in robots.txt ? the robots.tx blocks categories, but is still show as a followed (green) link when using the mozbar. Thanks! Holly ETA: I'm assuming that- disallow: myblog.com/category/ - is comparable to the nofollow tag on catagory?
Moz Pro | | squareplug0 -
Can you set-up a manual SEOmoz crawl?
I received a crawl report yesterday, made some site changes, and would like to see if those changes were done correctly. Rather than wait a week for my automatic crawl to be generated, is there anyway to initiate a manual crawl on a single subdomain as a PRO member? As a PRO member, you can schedule crawls for 2 subdomains every 24 hours, and you'll get up to 3,000 pages crawled per subdomain. When we've finished crawling, your reports will be sent to your PRO email address, which is currently From here... http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test
Moz Pro | | ICM0 -
How do i get to know th pages crawled by SEOMOZ?
My SEOMOZ campaign says that "n" number of pages were crawled. How do i get access to the list of the pages crawled by SEOMOZ?
Moz Pro | | IM_Learner0