Reducing duplicate content
-
Callcatalog.com is a complaint directory for phone numbers. People post information on the phone calls they get. Since there are many many phone numbers, obviously people haven't posted information on ALL of the phone numbers, THUS I have many phone numbers with zero content. SEOMoz is telling me that pages with zero content looks like duplicate content with each other..
The only difference between two pages that have zero coments is the title and phone number embedded in the page. For example, http://www.callcatalog.com/phones/view/413-563-3263 is a page that has zero comments..
I don't want to remove these zero comment phone number pages from the directory since many people find the pages via a phone number search.
Here's my question: what can I do to make google / seomoz think that thexe zero comment pages is not dupliicate content?
-
no not at all. but i would not worrie, as there is little info on them they are not really going to do much for you, when they are filled in, they will no longer be duplicates.
If they only ave a phhone number and title, they are not going to do anythiung for you -
I think Joel Hit is right.
Still the pages are very similar but again, is not something you should be afraid of.
As far as improving bounce rate you should think about A/B testing.
A few things you can try:
-
add a [next] / [show another result] / [ not the number you are looking for ? ] button that should at least drop the BR.
-
add a side bar with additional navigation options that links internally
just a few ideas - hope it helps.
- play with the informational layout including your ads (adsesne)
-
-
ok, so if google still indexes it then they DO NOT consider it duplicate?
Lol. Good point. You are right !
-
ok, so if google still indexes it then they DO NOT consider it duplicate?
-
If you add a no index on those pages they won't show in the search results and lose the entire purpose - the effect will be the same with removing the pages.
People are getting on those pages for sure - probably a lot of people overall.
-
Eyepaq -- very interesting. Any additional thoughts as to how to improve bounce rate then?
-
I've seen stats form a similar website - I've never thought that so many people are looking for phone numbers - it's incredible.
Now getting to the point, in my personal opinion you should do nothing. Especially don't remove those pages as that's suicide.
Even if the SeoMoz tool is showing duplicate content issues on the site - duplicate content within your site is NEVER a penalty situation. You will never get in trouble for having the same content or similar content on more pages within your site.
The only down side is that duplicate pages will compete to each other in search results but in your case they won't as you are looking for a single keyword for each page (with or without comments on it - the exact phone number that is).
The main goal is to get to a page after looking for that particular phone number so in your case multiple pages from your site with similar content won't compete - you are safe from all points of view.
You should never remove the pages with no comments from the site as it will drop your organic # by a lot - I've seen stats from a similar website and, like in your case, only a few pages had comments/names and 90% were blank pages with the number in h1 on the top only and those pages received a lot of organic direct hits.
The bounce rate however was high - so you might want to give some extra options within that page beside the number and the form as this can even increase your adsense ctr if done with extra care. If you already have a lot of traffic I would suggest A/B testing for the empty pages.
-
if I added a no index meta tag, then wouldn't it not show up in the google search index? Google lists many of my no-content pages and people show up on them. Any other ideas?
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
-
Solved How to reduce the spam score for my domain?
My domain longfeifei.com is for a regular company website and someone sent a lot of external links on different low-quality websites on the internet. Now the score is very high about 75%. If I disavow the unusual links from google search console. Is it possible to reduce the spam score? Is MOZ associated with GOOGLE Data? Thanks,
Moz Pro | | niaokun6838072 -
How do I fix duplicate title issues?
I have a sub domain that isn't even on our own site but it's resulting in a lot of errors in Moz for duplicate content, as shown here: http://cl.ly/1R081v0K0e2N. Would this affect our ranking or is it simply just errors within Moz? What measures could I take to make sure that Moz or Google doesn't associate our site with these errors? Would I have to noindex in the htaccess file for the sub domain?
Moz Pro | | MMAffiliate0 -
Feedback on Content Ideation / "Skyscraper" Spreadsheet Template
Hi All - I've been getting a ton of use out of the MOZ API for discovering the popularity of content - which I'm using for content ideation or to implement the Skyscraper concept. I built a spreadsheet template that combines MOZ with some other APIs to apply this to new topics of my choosing, and my friends encouraged me to clean it up a bit and share with the broader community. So, here it is - fire away! I'd love any and all feedback about the spreadsheet - it's a prototype still so it could stand to pull back more results. For example: would you want to include Domain Authority in the results? Focus more or less on the social sharing elements - or let you choose the thresholds? Would love to know if there other methodologies for which you'd be interested in seeing spreadsheet templates produced. Cheers! skyscraper-template.png
Moz Pro | | paulkarayan0 -
How are you using Moz Content?
Hey people, I just subscribed for Moz Content and I am wondering how are other professionals using it as a strategy tool. Today I just released a blog post talking about how larger content impacts PA. Not a big deal. I would appreciate some ideas and insights.
Moz Pro | | amirfariabr0 -
Duplicate content in crawl despite canonical
Hi! I've had a bunch of duplicate content issues come up in a crawl, but a lot of them seem to have canonical tags implemented correctly. For example: http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Fireplaces http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Nursery http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Turntables http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Turntables?page=0 Aztec http://www.alwayshobbies.com/brands/aztec-imports/-catg=Turntables?page=1 Any ideas on what's happening here?
Moz Pro | | neooptic0 -
Error in Moz duplicate content reports
Hi - I've run the Moz campaign on a client's site. Moz is saying that there are duplicate content errors, and when I look at the errors it is showing that they are all to do with the non-www URLs having being duplicated in the www form of the URLs. However this is not the case - all the non-www URLs are all 301 redirected to the www URLs. Is this an error in the Moz tool? Has anybody experienced something similar?
Moz Pro | | rorynatkiel0 -
Finding the source of duplicate content URL's
We have a website that displays a number of products. The product has variations (sizes) and unfortunately every size has its own URL (for now anyway). Needless to say, this causes duplicate content issues. (And of course, we are looking to change the URL's for our site as soon as possible) However, even though these duplicate URL's exist, you should not be able to land on them by navigating through the site. In theory, the site should always display the link to the smallest size. It seems that there is a flaw in our system somewhere, as these links are now found in our campaign here on SEOmoz. My question: is there any way to find the crawl path that lead to the URL's that shouldn't have been found, so we can locate the problem?
Moz Pro | | DocdataCommerce0 -
Should I worry about duplicate content errors caused by backslashes?
Frequently we get red-flagged for duplicate content in the MozPro Crawl Diagnostics for URLs with and without a backslash at the end. For example: www.example.com/ gets flagged as being a duplicate of www.example.com I assume that we could rel=canonical this, if needed, but our assumption has been that Google is clever enough to discount this as a genuine crawl error. Can anyone confirm or deny that? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | MackenzieFogelson0