Duplicate Pages on GWT when redesigning website
-
Hi, we recently redesigned our online shop. We have done the 301 redirects for all product pages to the new URL (and went live about 1.5 week ago), but GWT indicated that the old product URL and the new product URL are 2 different pages with the same meta title tags (duplication) - when in fact, the old URL is 301 redirecting to the new URL when visited.
I found this article on google forum: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/CvCjeNOxOUw
It says we either just wait for Google to re-crawl, of use the fetch URL function for the OLD URLs. Question is, after i fetch the OLD URL to tell Google that it's being redirected, should i click the button 'submit to index' or not? (See screengrab - please note that it was the OLD URL that was being fetched, not the NEW URL). I mean, if i click this button, is it telling Google that:a. 'This old URL has been redirected, therefore please index the new URL'? or
b. 'Please keep this old URL in your index'?What's your view on this? Thanks
-
Hi,
I migrated a load of product category pages on one of my websites recently to cleaner URLs and to force the crawl I submitted the new URLs (and children) to index via WMT. This was to pick them up quickly - and it worked (within seconds). The old URLs appearing were never a problem. However there are limits to the number of times you can do this so that might be a sticking point for your solution as I'm guessing you have lots of products. Try it with one page (a low traffic and selling product!) and see what happens - and let us know.
It's possible Google is holding onto your old URLs because they have a number of inbound links and the crawl will eventually catch up to only display the new URLs if you give it time.
Aside from agreeing with the sitemap submission suggestion, I'd also triple check that your 301s / canonicals are set up properly on your website's old URLs by firing Screaming Frog or another crawler at it.
George
-
Have you resubmitted your sitemap? That is a slightly simpler step. Personally I would wait for the pages to be indexed. This should really only take about 2 weeks. The SERP might reflect the old site until then, but if your rankings are good then that is a good thing for your SEO.
I don't think that fetching in this case will correctly reindex your site. The wait and see game is going to be your best chance at getting the natural response you want from Google without sacrificing your existing rankings.
-
Honestly speaking, I am sick of this Google Webmaster Tool delay in update… most of the time it shows me the days of months old when the website will be completely changed it will still talking about the old problems…
My first suggestion is to wait and I believe after few crawls it will understand that they have moved on from the problem you had before.
The image you attached will only tell you if the redirection is properly working or not and if the user is shorting from old page to the new one that means it is working.
I believe another thing you people can do is to give a social bump to your new pages and at the same time request Google to de-index the page. GWT have this option somewhere.
Hope this helps!
-
Sorry, forgot to attach.
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
-
How do I prevent duplicate page title errors from being generated by my multiple shop pages?
Our e-commerce shop has numerous pages within the main shop page. Users navigate through the shop via typical pagination. So while there may be 6 pages of products it's all still under the main shop page. Moz keeps flagging my shop pages as having duplicate titles (ie shop page 2). But they're all the same page. Users aren't loading unique pages each time they go to the next page of products and they aren't pages I can edit. I'm not sure how to prevent this issue from popping up on my reports.
Technical SEO | | NiteSkirm0 -
Duplicate pages or note? Variations just due to language changes?
I have some pages marked as duplicates, so I want to do what I can to solve the issues concerned. One issue concerns duplicates where the page content is indeed the same except for the language that the content is offered in. The URL for example of the documentation page of the site, in English is as follows:
Technical SEO | | PulseAnalytics
http://www.domain.com/support/documentation We then have the same content in German, French, Russian using the following URLs.
http://www.domain.com/de/support/documentation
http://www.domain.com/fr/support/documentation
http://www.domain.com/ru/support/documentation Each page has links to PDFs which are all in fact in English so the links to the docs are the same. Moz is flagging up all these pages as being duplicate content (which it is when translated back into English, but is not if you just consider that they are using completely different languages!) Has anyone any thoughts on how to solve this? Or is this something not to worry about / disregard? Many thanks Simon0 -
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
Many Errors on E-commerce website mainly Duplicate Content - Advice needed please!
Hi Mozzers, I would need some advice on how to tackle one of my client’s websites. We have just started doing SEO for them and after moz crawled the e-commerce it has detected: 36 329 Errors – 37496 warnings and 2589 Notices all going up! Most of the errors are due to duplicate titles and page content but I cannot identify where the duplicate pages come from, these are the links moz detected of the Duplicate pages (unfortunately I cannot add the website for confidentiality reasons) : • www.thewebsite.com/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=233&products_per_00&products_per_2&products_per_2&products_per_2&page=2 • www.thewebsite.com/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=233&products_per_00=&products_per_00&products_per_2&products_per_2&products_per_2&page=2 • www.thewebsite.com/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=233&products_per_00=&products_per_00&products_per_2&page=2 • www.thewebsite.com/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=233&products_per_2=&products_per_00&page=2 • www.thewebsite.com/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=233&products_per_00&products_per_00&products_per_00&products_per_00&page=2 With these URLs it is quite hard to identify which pages need to be canonicalize. And this is jsut an example out of thousands on this website. If anyone would have any advice on how to fix this and how to tackle 37496 errors on a website like this that would be great. Thank you for your time, Lyam
Technical SEO | | AlphaDigital0 -
Duplicate Page Content error but I can't see it
Hi All We're getting a lot of Duplicate Page Content errors but I can't match it up. For example this page: http://www.daytripfinder.co.uk/attractions/32-antique-cottage It is saying the on page properties as follows: Title DayTripFinder - Things to do reviewed by you - 7,000 attractions <dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">Meta Description</dt> <dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">Read Reviews, Browse Opening Hours and Prices. View Photos, Maps. 7,000 UK Visitor Attractions.</dt> <dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">But this isn't the page title or meta description.
Technical SEO | | KateWaite85
</dt> <dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">And it's showing five (many others) example pages that share it. Again the page titles and description are different.</dt> <dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">http://www.daytripfinder.co.uk/attractions/mckinlay-theatre</dt> <dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">http://www.daytripfinder.co.uk/attractions/bakers-dolphin</dt> <dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">http://www.daytripfinder.co.uk/attractions/shipley-park-fishing</dt> <dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">http://www.daytripfinder.co.uk/attractions/king-johns-lodge-and-gardens</dt> <dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">http://www.daytripfinder.co.uk/attractions/city-hall
</dt> Any ideas? Not sure if I'm missing something here! Thanks!0 -
We have over 3000 duplicate page titles, please help!
Hi, we did a crawl report and have over 3000 duplicate page titles. I'm not sure why this is happening... could it be because we have put posts in multiple categories? Can anyone help us with a quick fix? our site is www.stayathomemum.com.au thank you kindly, Chris
Technical SEO | | stayathomemum0 -
SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostic indicates duplicate page content for home page?
My first SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostic report for my website indicates duplicate page content for my home page. It lists the home page URL Page Title and URL twice. How do I go about diagnosing this? Is the problem related to the following code that is in my .htaccess file? (The purpose of the code was to redirect any non "www" backlink referrals to the "www" version of the domain.) RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^whatever.com [NC]
Technical SEO | | Linesides
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.whatever.com/$1 [L,R=301] Should I get rid of the "http" reference in the second line? Related to this is a notice in the "Crawl Notices Found" -- "301 Permanent redirect" which shows my home page title as "http://whatever.com" and shows the redirect address as http://http://www.whatever.com/ I'm guessing this problem is again related to the redirect code I'm using. Also... The report indicates duplicate content for those links that have different parameters added to the URL i.e. http://www.whatever.com?marker=Blah Blah&markerzoom=13 If I set up a canonical reference for the page, will this fix this? Thank you.0 -
Duplicate content issues with australian and us version of website
Good afternoon. I've tried searching for an answer to the following question but I believe my circumstance is a little different than what has been asked in the past. I currently run a Australian website targeted at a specific demographic (50-75) and we produce a LARGE number of articles on a wide variety of lifestyle segments. All of our focus up until now has been in Australia and our SEO and language is dedicated towards this. The next logical step in my mind is to launch a mirror website targeted at the US market. This website would be a simple mirror of a large number of articles (1000+) on subjects such as Food, Health, Travel, Money and Technology. Our current CMS has no problems in duplicating the specific items over and sharing everything, the problem is in the fact that we currently use a .com.au domain and the .com domain in unavailable and not for sale, which would mean we have to create a new name for the US targeted domain. The question is, how will mirroring this information, targeted towards US, affect us on Google and would we better off getting a large number of these articles 're-written' by a company on freelancer.com etc? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | Geelong
Drew0