Using robots.txt to deal with duplicate content
-
I have 2 sites with duplicate content issues.
One is a wordpress blog.
The other is a store (Pinnacle Cart).
I cannot edit the canonical tag on either site. In this case, should I use robots.txt to eliminate the duplicate content?
-
It will be any part of the URL that doesn't handle navigation, so look at what you can delete off the URL without breaking the link to the product page.
Take a look at this: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-parameter-handling-tool-helps-with.html
Remember, this will only work with Google!
This is another interesting video from Matt Cutts about removing content from Google: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/01/remove-your-content-from-google.html
-
If the urls look like this...
Would I tell Google to ignore p, mode, parent, or CatalogSetSortBy? Just one of those or all of those?
Thanks!!!
-
For Wordpress try : http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/canonical/
also look at Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin referenced on that page - I love it!
and for the duplicate content caused by the dymanic content on the pinnacle cart you can use the Google Webmasters tool to tell the Google to ignore certain parameters - go to Site configuration - Settings - Parameter handling and add the variables you wish to ignore to this list.
-
Hi,
The two sites are unrelated to each other so my concern is not duplicate content between the two, there is none.
However, on each of the sites I have the duplicate content issues. I do have admin privileges to both sites.
If there is a Wordpress plug in that would be great. Do you have one that you would recommend?
For my ecommerce site using pinnacle cart, I have duplicates because of the way people can search on the site. For example:
|
http://www.domain.com/accessories/
http://www.domain.com/accessories/?p=catalog&mode=catalog&parent=17&pg=1&CatalogSetSortBy=date
http://www.domain.com/accessories/?p=catalog&mode=catalog&parent=17&pg=1&CatalogSetSortBy=name
http://www.domain.com/accessories/?p=catalog&mode=catalog&parent=17&pg=1&CatalogSetSortBy=price
|
These all show as duplicate content in my webmaster tools reports. I don't have the ability to edit each head tag of pages in order to add a canonical link on this site.
-
What are your intentions here? Do you intend to leave both sites running? Can you give us more information on the sites? Are they aged domains, is one/any/both of them currently attracting any inbound links, are they ranking? What is the purpose of the duplicate content?
Are you looking to redirect traffic from one of the sites to the other using 301 redirect?
Or do you want both sites visible - using the Canonical link tag?
(I am concerned that you say you 'cannot edit the tag'? Do you not have full Admin access to either site?
There are dedicated Canonical management plugins for Wordpress (if you have access to the wp-admin area)
You are going to need some admin priviledges to make any alterations to the site so that you can correct this.
Let us know a bit more please!
These articles may be useful as they provide detailed best practice info on redirects:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-block-redirect-or-canonical
Check out this article on redirects
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
-
Duplicate content question
Hey Mozzers! I received a duplicate content notice from my Cycle7 Communications campaign today. I understand the concept of duplicate content, but none of the suggested fixes quite seems to fit. I have four pages with HubSpot forms embedded in them. (Only two of these pages have showed up so far in my campaign.) Each page contains a title (Content Marketing Consultation, Copywriting Consultation, etc), plus an embedded HubSpot form. The forms are all outwardly identical, but I use a separate form for each service that I offer. I’m not sure how to respond to this crawl issue: Using a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right, because each page/form combo is independent and serves a separate purpose. Using a rel=canonical link doesn’t seem right for the same reason that a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right. Using the Google Search Console URL Parameters tool is clearly contraindicated by Google’s documentation (I don’t have enough pages on my site). Is a meta robots noindex the best way to deal with duplicate content in this case? Thanks in advance for your help. AK
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
How to use robots.txt to block areas on page?
Hi, Across the categories/product pages on out site there are archives/shipping info section and the texts are always the same. Would this be treated as duplicated content and harmful for seo? How can I alter robots.txt to tell google not to crawl those particular text Thanks for any advice!
Technical SEO | | LauraHT0 -
Robots.txt
I have a client who after designer added a robots.txt file has experience continual growth of urls blocked by robots,tx but now urls blocked (1700 aprox urls) has surpassed those indexed (1000). Surely that would mean all current urls are blocked (plus some extra mysterious ones). However pages still listing in Google and traffic being generated from organic search so doesnt look like this is the case apart from the rather alarming webmaster tools report any ideas whats going on here ? cheers dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Using Rel Nofollow on Duplicate Pages
Hi there, I have a rather large site that has duplicate content on many pages due to how it's being spidered by google. I was hoping I could set the internal link to this page as "nofollow." My question is that I have hundreds of other sites with backlinks to these duplicate content pages.. will this affect me negatively if I tell google not to index the duplicated pages?
Technical SEO | | trialminecraftserverfinder0 -
How do I deal with Duplicate content?
Hi, I'm trying SEOMOZ and its saying that i've got loads of duplicate content. We provide phone numbers for cities all over the world, so have pages like this... https://www.keshercommunications.com/Romaniavoipnumbers.html https://www.keshercommunications.com/Icelandvoipnumbers.html etc etc. One for every country. The question is, how do I create pages for each one without it showing up as duplicate content? Each page is generated by the server, but Its impossible to write unique text for each one. Also, the competition seem to have done the same but google is listing all their pages when you search for 'DID Numbers. Look for DIDWW or MyDivert.
Technical SEO | | DanFromUK0 -
Duplicate content + wordpress tags
According to SEOMoz platform, one of my wordpress websites deals with duplicate content because of the tags I use. How should I fix it? Is it loyal to remove tag links from the post pages?
Technical SEO | | giankar0 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Content
I have a site that has a lot of contact modules. So basically each section/page has a contact person and when you click the contact button it brings up a new window with form to submit and then ends with a thank you page. All of the contact and thank you pages are showing up as duplicate page titles and content. Is this something that needs to be fixed even if I am not using them to target keywords?
Technical SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Crawl Errors and Duplicate Content
SEOmoz's crawl tool is telling me that I have duplicate content at "www.mydomain.com/pricing" and at "www.mydomain.com/pricing.aspx". Do you think this is just a glitch in the crawl tool (because obviously these two URL's are the same page rather than two separate ones) or do you think this is actually an error I need to worry about? Is so, how do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | MyNet0