URL Mixed Cases and Duplicate Content
-
Hi There,
I have a question for you. I am working on a website where by typing any letter of the URL in lower or upper case, it will give a 200 code.
Examples
www.examples.com/page1/product
www.examples.com/paGe1/Product
www.examples.com/PagE1/prOdUcT
www.examples.com/pAge1/proODUCt
and so on…
Although I cannot find evidence of backlinks pointing to my page with mixed cases, shall I redirect or rel=canonical all the possible combination of the cases to a lower version of them in order to prevent duplicate content? And if so, do you have any advice on how to complete such a massive job?
Thanks a lot
-
Thank you guys! Very helpful answers. Take care
-
Hi,
Technically this is duplicate content, but it is most likely something search engines understand to ignore (especially if no links point to the upper case / incorrect URLs). If it particularly bothers you, place a self-referencing canonical tag in the page's file so that www.examples.com/pAGe/PROducT references www.examples.com/page/product in its tag. Either that or a 301.
Cheers.
-
Have a look around many other sites, and they all do the same. Do a search for something in Google and then change the case of anything after the domain. Microsoft is the same. I am sure that there are examples that will 404 these requests, and that will then be a server side setting.
I really wouldn't worry about that though. MOZ is the same as well. Upper or lower case will give you the same page. in the last 15 years of SEO, I have never come across this as an issue
-Andy
-
It makes more sense to make a server level rule that will 301 any mixed case to a lower so if a URL is being accessed on anything other than lowercase it will redirect to the lower case URL.
This should save you some effort in the long run.
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
-
Is it possible to deindex old URLs that contain duplicate content?
Our client is a recruitment agency and their website used to contain a substantial amount of duplicate content as many of the listed job descriptions were repeated and recycled. As a result, their rankings rarely progress beyond page 2 on Google. Although they have started using more unique content for each listing, it appears that old job listings pages are still indexed so our assumption is that Google is holding down the ranking due to the amount of duplicate content present (one software returned a score of 43% duplicate content across the website). Looking at other recruitment websites, it appears that they block the actual job listings via the robots.txt file. Would blocking the job listings page from being indexed either by robots.txt or by a noindex tag reduce the negative impact of the duplicate content, but also remove any link juice coming to those pages? In addition, expired job listing URLs stay live which is likely to be increasing the overall duplicate content. Would it be worth removing these pages and setting up 404s, given that any links to these pages would be lost? If these pages are removed, is it possible to permanently deindex these URLs? Any help is greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | ClickHub-Harry0 -
When is Duplicate Content Duplicate Content
Hi, I was wondering exactly when duplicate content is duplicate content? Is it always when it is word-for-word or if it is similar? For example, we currently have an information page and I would like to add a FAQ to the website. There is, however, a crossover with the content and some of it is repeated. However, it is not written word for word. Could you please advise me? Thanks a lot Tom
Technical SEO | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Duplicate Tag Content Mystery
Hello Moz Communtiy! i am also having error of Duplicate Tag Content Mystery like: http://www.earnmoneywithgoogleadsense.com/tag/blog-post/ http://www.earnmoneywithgoogleadsense.com/tag/effective-blog-post/ Pages are same. I have 100+ Error on website so how can i remove this error? DO you have any tutorial based on this? Can i change canonical url at once or i need to set it one by one? If you have any video basis on it, i will recommend.
Technical SEO | | navneetkumar7860 -
Duplicate Content in Wordpress.com
Hi Mozers! I have a client with a blog on wordpress.com. http://newsfromtshirts.wordpress.com/ It just had a ranking drop because of a new Panda Update, and I know it's a Dupe Content problem. There are 3900 duplicate pages, basically because there is no use of noindex or canonical tag, so archives, categories pages are totally indexed by Google. If I could install my usual SEO plugin, that would be a piece of cake, but since Wordpress.com is a closed environment I can't. How can I put a noindex into all category, archive and author peges in wordpress.com? I think this could be done by writing a nice robot.txt, but I am not sure about the syntax I shoud use to achieve that. Thank you very much, DoMiSol Rossini
Technical SEO | | DoMiSoL0 -
Duplicate url problem causing me problems
Hi, i am working with a joomla site and i am using the sh404sef plugin. I have contacted the developer of the plugin who has not been very helpful so i am hoping to get help here. The problem i am having is, the description of the page showing in google listings is not the same as what i have put into the meta tag description. for example, for this page http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk/virtual-gastric-band-with-hypnotherapy the meta tag description should be Gastric Band Hypnotherapy to lose weight guaranteed. Free Gastric Band Hypnosis Consultations with Well Known Gastric Hypno Band expert as seen on TV. Hypno Gastric Band Works. We offer full support after your Gastric Band Hypnotherapy but in google it is showing Gastric Band Hypnotherapy Works. If you would like a slimmer and healthier body with all the benefits of weight loss surgery without any of the risks that can be ... now one thing i have noticed is: in the sh404sef control panel, i have noticed that i have the following index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=190&id=153&lang=en&view=article the above is the original url from day one but then i have the one below which is not the original index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=190&catid=150&id=153&lang=en&view=article i keep deleting the above which is not the original but it keeps coming back and i have been told this could be the fault can anyone please help me with this and solve how to stop it from coming back so google shows the correct description please.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Hiding Duplicate Content using Javascript
We have e-commerce site selling books. Besides basic information on books, we have content for “About the book” , “Editorial Reviews”, “About the author” etc. But the content in all these section are duplicate and are available on all sites selling similar books. Our question is: 1.Should we worry about the content being duplicate?2.If yes, then will it by a good idea to hide this duplicate content using javascript or iframe?
Technical SEO | | CyrilWilson0 -
How do I eliminate duplicate url, duplicate title issues using Joomla CMS?
We have a site using Joomla CMS, integrated with Jreviews and Jomsocial. Utilizing ACE SEF to generate Dynamic URL structure. Our issue is that we are recieving multiple instances of duplicate url's and duplicate titles due to the way joomla is working with jreviews for all our 7,000+ business listings. Site is already ranked for many broad/national keywords, concerned that our state and local rankings are limited by these errors. How can we prevent this from happening without re-writing the entire website?
Technical SEO | | mdmcn0 -
Different TLD's same content - duplicate content? - And a problem in foreign googles?
Hi, Operating from the Netherlands with customers troughout Europe we have for some countries the same content. In the netherlands and Belgium Dutch is spoken and in Germany and Switserland German is spoken. For these countries the same content is provided. Does Google see this as duplicate content? Could it be possible that a german customer gets the Swiss website as a search result when googling in the German Google? Thank you for your assistance! kind regards, Dennis Overbeek Dennis@acsi.eu
Technical SEO | | SEO_ACSI0