Moz Crawler URL paramaters & duplicate content
-
Hi all, this is my first post on Moz Q&A
Questions:
- Does the Moz Crawler take into account rel="canonical" for search results pages with sorting / filtering URL parameters?
- How much time does it take for an issue to disappear from the issues list after it's been corrected? Does it come op in the next weekly report?
I'm asking because the crawler is reporting 50k+ pages crawled, when in reality, this number should be closer to 1000. All pages with query parameters have the correct canonical tag pointing to the root URL, so I'm wondering whether I need to noindex the other pages for the crawler to report correct data?:
Original (canonical URL): DOMAIN.COM/charters/search/mx/BS?search_location=cabo-san-lucas
Filter active URL: DOMAIN.COM/charters/search/mx/BS?search_location=cabo-san-lucas&booking_date=&booking_days=1&booking_persons=1&priceFilter%5B%5D=0%2C500&includedPriceFilter%5B%5D=drinks-soft
Also, if noindex is the only solution, will it impact the ranking of the pages involved?
Note: Google and Bing are semi-successful in reporting index page count, each reporting around 2.5k result pages when using the site:DOMAIN.com query. The rel canonical tag was missing for a short period of time about 4 weeks ago, but since fixing the issue these pages still haven't been deindexed.
Appreciate any suggestions regarding Moz Crawler & Google / Bing index count!
-
Happy to help!
We crawled roughly 49k pages because there were that many links on the site that we could find. 50k is also the new standard crawl limit for campaigns in Standard and Medium subscriptions. Adding a rel=canonical to a page doesn't mean it won't get crawled by our campaign crawler, only that the crawler is to refer to the canonicalized link for reporting purposes.
Without going into too specific of URL details, these pages are considered duplicates because their canonical tags point to different URLs. For example,
is considered a duplicate of
DOMAIN.COM/charters/search/mx/QR?booking_date=&booking_days=&booking_persons=limit%252525253D20
because the canonical tag for the first page is
DOMAIN.COM/charters/search/mx/QR?offset=20
while the canonical for the second URL is
DOMAIN.COM/charters/search/mx/QR
Since the canonical tags point to different pages it is assumed that DOMAIN.COM/charters/search/mx/QR?offset=20 and DOMAIN.COM/charters/search/mx/QR are likely to be duplicates themselves.
Here is how our system interprets duplicate content vs. rel=canonical:
Assuming A, B, C, and D are all duplicates,
If A references B as the canonical, then they are not considered duplicates
If A and B both reference C as canonical, A and B are not considered duplicates of each other
If A references C as a canonical, A and B are considered duplicated
If A references C as canonical, B references D, then A and B are considered duplicatesThe above example from your campaign actually falls into the fourth example I've listed above. Hope this helps clear things up
-
Thanks Sam!
I've read the post and checked my canonical tags but still can't seem to find what's causing the canonicalized pages to be indexed by RogerBot. The same page shows up in Moz's crawl test 100 times with slightly different parameters.
I'll keep investigating but some specific feedback from Moz staff would be appreciated
-
Hi!
I'm going to leave the strategy discussion open to the community but from a technical standpoint, we will count rel=canonical on dynamic urls as long as they are implemented correctly. Dr. Pete has a great post where he talks about canonicals that might be helpful as well. Updates to campaigns happen on a weekly basis depending on when the campaign was created. So if it was created on a Tuesday, you'll see updated campaign data every Tuesday after. You can run a crawl test (accessible from Research Tools) to get 3k page crawls in between your updates though. Hope this helps!
-
Thanks for the info searchbuzz. So if I understand correctly, new pages are crawled and kept in the index (up to the campaign limit), but issues on indexed pages are reported separately.
My issue is that due to the dynamic URLs used in search filters on my site I actually have 49k issues detected (over 95% are duplicate content and long URL issues because the crawler is indexing the same page many times for each URL parameter combination). The crawl test can't index the entire site because it generates a huge amount of pages.
It's a travel-related website with listings in 233 cities and multiple filter functionality, so each unique 'page' of results is indexed more than 100 times, even though there's a rel="canonical" tag pointing to the non-parametrized URL of that page.
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
-
Moz DA is not increasing
Hey my website best offset smokers under $1000 is not increasing DA. is there anyway to increase the DA currently its DA is 8
Moz Bar | | 0hjgh60 -
Moz On-Page Grader doesn't pick up my Title, URL, Meta, H1, Body, IMG ALT's....does this mean Google won't?
Good morning, As my title says, 'Moz On-Page Grader doesn't pick up my Title, URL, Meta, H1, Body, IMG ALT's....does this mean Google won't?' My URL is www.refusedcarfinance.com and I'm currently targeting the Keyword 'bad credit car finance'. I am using Yoast SEO and have the keyword in my title, meta, content, h1's etc. Any advice would my much appreciated. Kindest regards, Joshua
Moz Bar | | RocketStats0 -
Why does the moz crawl test lists page twice?
Hi, I'm running into an issue where some crawlers list my pages twice, once with a trailing slash, once without. I first saw it on a few pages with screaming frog, then saw it happen on all my pages with the moz crawler. The site is www.kidsandart.org and its on Squarespace. I grepped the sitemap.xml I submitted to google webmaster and got 167 distinct pages, all of them without a trailing slash. Any insights on why this is happening, and how to regard moz crawler results would be appreciated. thanks Tom
Moz Bar | | tpushpathadam0 -
My product pages have no weight / links from root domains with the Moz tool bar
Hi, When I view my home page (http://www.arkwildlife.co.uk) with the Moz toolbar, I see a good PA and a good amount of links from root domains. As I go down the site, it seems to get worse. The category pages (http://www.arkwildlife.co.uk/Category/0/Straight_Foods.html) have a little but not much and then from this point onwards, it's nothing. The product page (http://www.arkwildlife.co.uk/Item/Straight_Foods~Sunflower_Seeds/SUNH/Premium_Sunflower_Hearts.html) is reporting to have no root domain links but I am not sure why. Interestingly, when I click through to a review page (http://www.arkwildlife.co.uk/StockReview/0/SUNH/0/Premium_Sunflower_Hearts.html) it does have some juice. Would anyone be able help on why this is happening and what I need to be looking at in order to resolve it please? EDIT: I've been looking at the hyperlinks and notice something odd. If I review the score with the first link below, it gives a score of 1, but the second gives a PA of 13 with one root domain linked. 1:http://www.arkwildlife.co.uk/Item/Straight_Foods~Sunflower_Seeds/SUNH/Premium_Sunflower_Hearts.html 2:http://www.arkwildlife.co.uk/Item/Straight_Foods%7ESunflower_Seeds/SUNH/Premium_Sunflower_Hearts.html Please note the "%7E" instead of the "~" in the URL. The browser appears to show the ~ character no matter what but the rank of the page changes. I don't understand what the Moz toolbar is doing with this. Note: This behaviour only happens in Mozilla Firefox, in chrome both the rankings are zero for each URL. Many Thanks.
Moz Bar | | nawgie0 -
How to make sense of data for this keyword (Moz Keyword vs. Google KW Planner)
The keyword "auto immune disorder" has an avg monthly (local/US) search of 880 in Google KW Planner with "low" competition In Moz, the same keyword has an avg monthly (local/US) search of 5 with a KW difficulty of 71%. I realize that the competition in Google KWP is based on ads, but is there a discrepancy when the search volume is so different in Google vs. Moz/Bing? Based on the above data, it seems like it would make sense to do a Google Adword (high search volume, low competition) instead of trying to rank organically...am I on the right track here? Thanks!
Moz Bar | | lulu710 -
No Keyword in URL, but it is there
Hi,friends. I have grade A on all pages but system shows like no keyword in url, but it is there. for example i have Latvian keyword: bīstamo kravu pārvadājumi (with Latvian characters like Ū, Ā) I have url with exact keyword in it: http://vervo.lv/lv/kravu-parvadajumi/transports/bistamo-kravu-parvadajumi So why moz dont see that keyword, it does not understand special characters?
Moz Bar | | Liva0 -
On Page Grade - Moz Analytics
When I go to search overview I can see my on page optimization grades, but when I try to use the on page grade optimizer for different keywords and url's I get the error. "The URL you entered does not appear to be returning a page successfully. Please make sure that you've entered the URL of valid, working page." However, I know it is a valid url and I get the error even if I use the same url and same keyword I can see the grade for from the search overview. Also, if I try to regrade the page nothing happens and where my previous grade and analysis was located I now have nothing. Any information about why this is happening? Thanks for the help.
Moz Bar | | ZeroWing0 -
Moz not crawling opencart product pages
hi, i have waited for over 2 weeks now and the crawler only got 8 pages, and is not getting all the open cart pages and products. any idea of what can be wrong? im using joomla 2.5.11 and mijoshop 2.0.5 (which uses opencart 1.5.5.1). thanks
Moz Bar | | marlvass10