WMT Showing Duplicate Meta Description Issues Altough Posts Were Redirected
-
Dear Moz Community,
Some time ago we've change the structure of our website and we've redirected the old URL's to the new ones. About 2,000 posts were redirected at that time.
While checking Webmaster Tools a few days ago I've discovered that about 500 duplicate meta-description issues appear in the "HTML Improvements" area. To my surprise, altough the old posts were redirected to the new path, WMT sees the description of the old posts similar with the one of the new post. Moreover, after changing the structure all meta-descriptions were modified and they weren't the same used before the restructure.
For example I've redirected /blog/taxi-transfer-from-merton-sw19-to-london-city-airport/ to /destinations/greater-london/merton-sw19/taxi-transfer-to-london-city-airport-from-merton/
Now they are shown as having duplicate content. I've checked the redirects and they are working.
I get the same error from the redirected pages for about 150 titles.
Did anyone else get this errors or can you please offer me some suggestions about how I can fix this?
Thank you in advance!
Tiberiu
-
Yes - assuming this is the final/good page, you have it canonical link to itself.
See #5 on this post by DP
http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
-
Dear CleverPHD,
Thank you for your answer. Your advice sounds pretty good but let me see if I got your suggestion clearly. So, from what I understand, you are saying that for the page www.example.com**/blog/taxi-transfer-from-merton-sw19-to-london-city-airport/ **I should add the following as the rel canonical?
Thank you once again!
Best regards,
Tiberiu
-
I have seen this exact issue before in GWT on a site I work with. It is annoying, but does look to happen on larger sites. Here is what we did to fix our issue. This assumes you already have the proper 301 redirects in place.
-
Add the canonical link to self on all the new pages
-
Wait for Google bot to spider them
-
Wait for GWT to update the status in the report
It is not a quick fix as it takes a while for steps 2 & 3 to cycle though as not all pages are spidered at the same rate. it may take you several months to see it all work itself out.
On this same site, I now also see if I have a new post that I then change the URL and add a 301 that GWT goes through this same process. Again, it is really annoying as I have the 301 in place, I have sent a clear directive to Google that the new page is replacing the old and they show the duplicate error for the old and new URLs in GWT.
I cannot see any logic in why this happens and why the report shows the way that it does. My best guess is that GWT is doing some batch processing and the sequence is off on what is looked at when and so this is a side effect of that process. It is like the spider first sees the new and old URLs from the 301 and logs both URLs. What should happen next is the next batch process should account for the 301 redirects and take out the old URLs, instead the process to check duplicate titles and descriptions runs and generates the duplicate report before the 301 cleanup process can get to it. Disclaimer, I am not a developer etc, but just trying to guess at the logic of "why".
If anyone else has any insight on why this happens, I would love to hear it. I have been able to "fix" the issue using the steps above, but it was in reality not broken to start with. It works out as one of the Moz rx is to use self canonicalizing links to help with scrapers, parameters etc. I just wish GWT was more useful in this sense as I have to sort out all the "errors" to get to the real issues. I end up having to use the Moz crawl or Screaming Frog etc to get at this information.
-
-
Tiberiu,
So google WMT is giving these errors? I've had this in the past with a site of a client. Issues were long solved and still Google WMT gives these errors. What does moz.com campaign say? Do the same errors occur here? It could well be a glitch of bug in Google WMT.
Regards
Jarno
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
-
Wordpress pages posts
Say you have a WordPress website with reviews and lists. Would you use "post" or "page" type for them? Is there any SEO advantage in using pages/subpages instead of posts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabx1 -
Shall I change duplicated product descriptions if I am top ranking result and was first to publish it?
about 20% of total 500 products in our shop have a manufacturer product description, which appears repeatedly on maybe 10 other sites and also on ebay and amazon. Issue is just with our own brand. We have another brand website where we publish the same product descriptions as well (google knows that we own both sites). The product description was first published on shop website before anywhere else and we are ranking number one for the product despite quite strong competition and we outrank our brand website as well. Which of the following options would you opt for? keeping the description and just adding some unique content replacing the complete product description by a new one
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Duplicate Content: Is a product feed/page rolled out across subdomains deemed duplicate content?
A company has a TLD (top-level-domain) which every single product: company.com/product/name.html The company also has subdomains (tailored to a range of products) which lists a choosen selection of the products from the TLD - sort of like a feed: subdomain.company.com/product/name.html The content on the TLD & subdomain product page are exactly the same and cannot be changed - CSS and HTML is slightly differant but the content (text and images) is exactly the same! My concern (and rightly so) is that Google will deem this to be duplicate content, therfore I'm going to have to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of all subdomain pages, pointing to the original product page on the TLD. Does this sound like the correct thing to do? Or is there a better solution? Moving on, not only are products fed onto subdomain, there are a handfull of other domains which list the products - again, the content (text and images) is exactly the same: other.com/product/name.html Would I be best placed to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of the product pages on other domains, pointing to the original product page on the actual TLD? Does rel cannonical work across domains? Would the product pages with a rel cannonical tag in the header still rank? Let me know if there is a better solution all-round!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iam-sold0 -
Duplicate Errors from Wordpress login redirects
I've some Duplicate issues showing up in Moz Analytics which are due to a Q&A plugin being used on a Wordpress website which prompts the user to login. There's a number of links looking like the one shown below, which lead to the login page: www.website.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.website.com%question%2.... What's the best way to deal with this? -- extra info: this is only showing up in Moz Analytics. Google Webmaster Tools reports no duplicates.. I'm guessing this is maybe down to the 'redirect_to' parameter being effective in grouping the URLs for Googlebot. currently the wplogin and consequent redirects are 'noindex, follow' - I cannot see where this is being generated from in wp-login.php to change this to nofollow (if this will solve it).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregDixson0 -
Index, Nofollow Issue
We are having on our site a couple of pages that we want the page to be indexed, however, we don't want the links on the page to be followed. For example url: http://www.printez.com/animal-personal-checks.html. We have added in our code: . Bing Webmaster Tools, is telling us the following: The pages uses a meta robots tag. Review the value of the tag to see if you are not unintentionally blocking the page from being indexed (NOINDEX). Question is, is the page using the right code as of now or do we need to do any changes in the code, if so, what should we use for them to index the page, but not to follow the links on the page? Please advise, Morris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PrintEZ0 -
Redirection question
How would I redirect this URL: http://www.members.mysite.com/ to this URL: http://www.mysite.com/ ? I cant figure it out
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Do different meta titles & descriptions delete the canonical origin?
Hi, hopefully anyone knows something about this case: There is a canonical tag on site "www.xyz.com**/de_de/" **refering to site "www.xyz.com/de-de/". If the meta title and descriptions are different on both sides - is there a problem that google will not pay attention to the canonical tag? Do both sides need the same title and canonical? Thanx for your answers! Cheers Heiko!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | heckert0 -
Duplicate Title Tags & Duplication Meta Description after 301 Redirect
Today, I was checking my Google webmaster tools and found 16,000 duplicate title tags and duplicate meta description. I have investigate for this issue and come to know about as follow. I have changed URL structure for 11,000 product pages on 3rd July, 2012 and set up 301 redirect from old product pages to new product pages. Google have started to crawl my new product pages but, De-Indexing of old URLs are quite slower. That's why I found this issue on Google webmaster tools. Can anyone suggest me, How can I increase ratio of De-Indexing for old URLs? OR any other suggestions? How much time Google will take to De-Index old URLs from web search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0