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
-
Videos on duplicate content editing
Hi, I am looking for good videos with visual examples on how to edit duplicate content issues. I am editing a law firms website, and for the most part the duplicate issues seem to show up in tag URL's on the blog. I feel like I have maybe half of the picture figured out, but I am not sure how or where to make changes. I have gone through the crawl diagnostic issues and a few articles, but I know I am a visual learner. Therefore a video might be helpful. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to get started? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | DigitalEnvy0 -
Duplicate Page Title error for an eCommerce store !!
I currently launched my eCommerce startup hosted in Shopify and linked with MOZ. From my first Crawl Report I am getting 580 Duplicate Page Title i.e. all my Collection page have the same title. I have googled and have been checking the MOZ community but cannot find a fix to it. Some of the URL's are - http://www.onlypetstore.com/collections/all http://www.onlypetstore.com/collections/all?page=10 http://www.onlypetstore.com/collections/all?page=100 http://www.onlypetstore.com/collections/all?page=101 http://www.onlypetstore.com/collections/all?page=102 http://www.onlypetstore.com/collections/all?page=103 I am new to SEO and any suggestions will be a great help to me.
Moz Pro | | OnlyPetStore2 -
Is The Number of Duplicate Pages reduced after adding canonical ref to the dupe versions ?
Hi Is the number of duplicate pages reported in a dupe page content error report reduced on subsequent crawls, if you have resolved the dupe content problem via adding the canonical tag to duplicate versions (referring the original page). Like it would if you were solving the problem via a 301 redirect (i think/presume) ? Cheers Dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Duplicate Page Title - although there are differences
Hello, I get duplicate page titles errors on pages in which there are little differences. For example: C++ Online Test for Seniors C# Online Test for Seniors I assume that from some reason the ++ and the # are removed when SEOMoz crawler checks for duplicate page titles. As you may know C# and C++ means two different programming languages. Should I do something about it or is it a bug in the crawler?
Moz Pro | | ulukach0 -
Duplicate page report
We ran a CSV spreadsheet of our crawl diagnostics related to duplicate URLS' after waiting 5 days with no response to how Rogerbot can be made to filter. My IT lead tells me he thinks the label on the spreadsheet is showing “duplicate URLs”, and that is – literally – what the spreadsheet is showing. It thinks that a database ID number is the only valid part of a URL. To replicate: Just filter the spreadsheet for any number that you see on the page. For example, filtering for 1793 gives us the following result: | URL http://truthbook.com/faq/dsp_viewFAQ.cfm?faqID=1793 http://truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=1793 http://truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=1793&pf=true http://www.truthbook.com/blogs/dsp_viewBlogEntry.cfm?blogentryID=1793 http://www.truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=1793 | There are a couple of problems with the above: 1. It gives the www result, as well as the non-www result. 2. It is seeing the print version as a duplicate (&pf=true) but these are blocked from Google via the noindex header tag. 3. It thinks that different sections of the website with the same ID number the same thing (faq / blogs / pages) In short: this particular report tell us nothing at all. I am trying to get a perspective from someone at SEOMoz to determine if he is reading the result correctly or there is something he is missing? Please help. Jim
Moz Pro | | jimmyzig0 -
Benefits of reducing on page links
This is more of a discussion point. What would be the measurable results of reducing the number of on page links, specifically on a home page, but let's assume by way of a large navigation menu most of the pages have a lot of links" For instance, would any of the stats on the MozBar be affected (let's start with the home page). Would the Page Authority or MozRank change at all, perhaps because there is less "juice" flowing out of the home page? Thanks! 🙂
Moz Pro | | ntcma0 -
Seomoz & Duplicate Page Content Issue?
Hi, What is the criteria on Seomoz Crawl Diagnostic Report? I got a long list of URLs indicating Content that is identical (or nearly identical) to content on other pages of your site forces your pages to unnecessarily compete with each other for rankings. But as I gone through none of the reported pages duplicate. What should I do? Thanks in Advance
Moz Pro | | VipinLouka780 -
My crawl diagnostic is showing 2 duplicate content and titles.
First of all Hi - My name is Jason and I've just joined - How you all doing? My 1st question then: When I view where these errors are occurring it says www mydomain co uk and www mydomain co uk/index.html Isn't this the same page? I have looked into my root folder and only index.html exists.
Moz Pro | | JasonHegarty0