Moz crawler finding my homepage multiple times
-
Hi and thank you in advance for your help!
I have a Moz Pro campaign running (I am a complete Moz novice by the way) for one of my websites (balloonsutah.com). After crawling my site, the Moz crawler informed me that I have 3 pages with duplicate content. While I am not sure why exactly this is happening, the crawler indexed my homepage 3 times under different url's.
-balloonsutah.com
-balloonsutah.com/
-balloonsutah.com/index.htmlI checked my FTP server and I cannot figure out for the life of me why the crawler is finding anything other than the index.html file.
I suppose I need to do something regarding a rel="Canonical" but I am not terribly familiar with that either.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Keenan -
You're welcome!
-
Great answer! I appreciate the time you spent spelling everything out in detail. Thank you!
-
First things first, I did check all web addresses. They all exist. You probably need to provide more detail whether or not you are using a CMS for your web pages.
All 3 pages have different page authority. That is, one of the version is ranking higher than the other versions. I did a quick check of that via Moz toolbar. Looks like the index.html has the highest authority.
Note that all 3 versions you listed, has 2 other versions. The one with the www, and the one without the www. Judging from the moz toolbar, looks like you rank better for the one without the 'www' . Rel canonical is is good option, but in this case I would try to do a 301 redirect from the server side first. Again, not sure how much access you have to the server side. You might need to contact your web admin.host company etc.
You can read about redirects more over here. --> http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection. If you don't have access to the server you can try doing the rel canonical. Read more here --> http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
Example. you have www.example.com/page1.htm, /page2.htm, page3.htm. They all have same exact content. Lets say that pag1.htm is your main version. You can do the following in the header section of page2, and page 3.htm
"This tag tells Bing and Google that the given page should be treated as though it were a copy of the URL www.example.com/pag1.htm/ and that all of the links and content metrics the engines apply should actually be credited toward the provided URL."
I would recommend not to delete all the other version, but instead do a 301 redirect, or a rel canonical, as they all of some kind of page authority, except index.html has the highest. (the non www version). But you need to make that decision. But looks like that's what you want to be the main one anyway.
ALSO,
You can tell google which version you prefer to google in GWT. This informs google which version you prefer. You can read more here.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en
"Once you tell us your preferred domain name, we use that information for all future crawls of your site and indexing refreshes. For instance, if you specify your preferred domain as http://www.example.com and we find a link to your site that is formatted as http://example.com, we follow that link as http://www.example.com instead. In addition, we'll take your preference into account when displaying the URLs. If you don't specify a preferred domain, we may treat the www and non-www versions of the domain as separate references to separate pages."
"Note: Once you've set your preferred domain, you may want to use a 301 redirect to redirect traffic from your non-preferred domain, so that other search engines and visitors know which version you prefer."
You cannot control the www and non www versons of your website, but you can control, making duplicate pages, especially of your home page. I am guessing that that is something that was done by your CMS. Index.html was probably done by you. FURTHERMORE, I think .com/ & .com is the one and the same thing. and you probably had to decide, when you were making a new campaign in moz. They probably asked you to put down your web address for your domain, and your probably put something like, "balloonsutah.com"Not exactly sure, why it showed you .com & .com/, but it makes sense that they would show you, .com, and /index.html, as they are two different pages, even though it has the same content. It still is two different URL's.
I probably wouldn't worry too much about it. But I'll let one of the moz members answer about .com &.com/. I would perhaps concern myself more about 301 redirects, and rel canonicals.
Hope I helped.
-
Thank you for the help!
-
Hello Keenan-price,
Welcome to the Moz community!
Moz is reporting these duplicates correctly. Each of the listed URLs are seen as unique URLs and unique pages. This is a common problem when a website does not have the proper canonical tags and 301 redirects in place for these URLs.
You'll want to decide on how your website should be displayed (which URL you prefer) and implement the canonical tag and 301 redirects.
the 301 redirects could be done with your .htaccess file, depending on your site environment. The canonical tags would depend on your site's environment (wordpress, custom development, ect).
Also, make sure to go into your Google Webmaster Tools account and specify a single page as being the correct page, once you've decided on how you want the URL to be displayed.
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 Pro OnDemand Crawl fail on on WordPress site
Hello, I just can't seem to understand why OnDemand Crawl fails on further attempts only 4 pages out of 68 I am using WordPress, Divi Theme and on LiteSpeed server. Robots.txt allows rogerbot just can seem to find the issue
Moz Bar | | ChrisSanClaire0 -
How Much Time It Will Take To Lower the Spam Score?
I'm facing an issue with my website. Due to little to no knowledge about link building and backlink, i created backlinks without checking the quality and spam score of the sites. Now there are many sites linking to my website but the overall spam score is very high of my website and my domain is reviewheart.com that i'm talking about. I have created a list and disavowed all he poor linking domains but still no improvement shown. Can anyone have the idea how much time moz will take to show the updated spam score as i have disavowed all the low quality spammed linking site?
Moz Bar | | rajas20191 -
I can't login to the Mozbar in Chrome. Just takes me to the homepage?
So, every time I press log in on the Mozbar, it takes me to the Moz home page which I'm already logged in to but there is no change on the status of the Mozbar? What should I do to remedy this? Thanks!
Moz Bar | | soapmed3 -
MOZ Freshweb reported mentions that really does not contain any mention - anyone else experiencing this?
MOZ Freshweb reported links from "traffic.fullcontentrss.com" that doesn't really contain any mention. Is this a MOZ error or is it maybe since fullcontentrss.com has a javascript that pulls data into their own RSS, MOZ ended up crawling partially and as a result not reporting the correct URL? Anyone else experiencing this anomaly?
Moz Bar | | CPR_PTANTONO0 -
MOZ Page Grader - Sorry, but that URL is inaccessible?
Hi, I am trying to use the MOZ page grader on this page - https://www.respuestasparaelhombre.com/datos-sobre-disfunción-eréctil-preguntas but it is saying Sorry, but that URL is inaccessible - any ideas? Thanks
Moz Bar | | Jason_Marsh1230 -
Moz bar chrome
Hi
Moz Bar | | Emanuele_Ricci
moz bar does not work on chrome, it works correctly on firefox.
The bar is there but not showing any data...
Any idea? It can be something that is blocking moz bar on chrome browser or what else????
Thanks1 -
Does Moz Pro generate similar keyword phrases in a list (preferably showing their difficulty %) or is it only one phrase at a time with no similar words/phrases suggested?
I just signed up for Moz Pro but the keyword research seems to only let you try one keyword phrase at a time. Is there a way for it to give related keywords along with their difficulty % info, etc. It is far too slow and inconvenient doing one at a time.
Moz Bar | | SavingSpotlight0 -
Moz reporting reliable?
I have been working with our MIS department on addressing our errors on duplicate content and titles caused by parameter URLs. MIS insists that they have solved the problem with canonical tags, which are in place. They said they were getting warnings from Google and Bing, but that after they put the canonical tags in place, those went away. They are questioning the Moz reports, suggesting that I instead rely on SEO Toolit by Microsoft. (As an aside, we are using SharePoint 2010, crossing our fingers for an upgrade to 2013, which presumably will make a lot of the issues we’re having go away). So my questions are: 1) Why are these Moz reports reporting all of these errors that have supposedly been rectified (in 2011)? Do I disregard the duplicate content/title errors on the Moz report and defer to SEO Toolkit, as MIS suggests?
Moz Bar | | SSFCU0