Abnormal crawl issues appearing in my Moz results
-
I have been asked to look at a site for a friend and was more than surprised to see 16,9k crawl issues appear in the dashboard... of this 6,238 are duplicate page content and 5878 are duplicated page titles.
What on earth is going on? I have spoken to the web developer as it appears there is a dev site somewhere and this is his response
[Can I stress that Google determines which site was in the index first and then removes other sites it sees as having duplicate content. Our dev sites appearing in the search index would not affect your ranking due to duplicate content as Google would see your site as the first site with the content]
As I cannot make contact with him, I am scratching my head, surely a dev site should be no-indexed, it sounds as though he is saying that its ok because Google will take the main site as the first site with the content...
Very confused! Help need MOZ community.
Manythanks,
Sarah
-
Thanks again Dirk. I like your direct and knowledgeable responses. I have sent a Linkedin connection!!
Many thanks,
Sarah
-
Hi Sarah,
Googlebot will follow these links as well and discover these "useless" pages (the are off course not useless from human perspective but they don't add value for bots - and they will be considered as duplicates). Duplicates are no reason for "punishment" - so you could just let them be. Personally I would put a nofollow on these links or add a "noindex" tag to the login page. Normally you shouldn't use nofollow on internal links - but login pages are an exemption on this (check also https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2298312/matt-cutts-you-dont-have-to-nofollow-internal-links : "Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, and things like login pages can be the exception. He said it doesn’t hurt to put the nofollow link for a link pointing to a login page, or things like terms and conditions or other “useless” pages. However, it doesn’t hurt at all for those pages to be crawled by Google."
For the practical part - if you add an additional question to a question which has been marked as answered - only the ones who have already answered will see the additional question. To be on the safe side - it's better open a new question if you want other people to have a look at it.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
-
hello Dirk, thank you for that great answer, we have since been doing a bit more digging of our own and before we go back to the web developer we want to check what should be happening with the links the we are finding duplicated as we are seeing that the issues relating to Duplicate Pages are coming from links from the login page which shows information about where the user was redirected from.
For example, if the visitor is not logged on and wishes to wish-list an item, they will be redirected to the login page, with the item code and intended action in the url; which can then continue on to the desired page once logged on.
The MOZ crawler is seeing these pages as having Duplicated Content whilst they are all the same apart from a piece of information in the URL. Should we be blocking these duplications? Are they a risk to us? What should we be doing?
I have also added this as a new question - I am quite new to this community thing so wasn't sure which was the best way to ask the question.
Many thanks again,
Sarah
-
Moz is only indexing pages it's crawler is able to find. This implies that on your production site you have links to your development site.
Don't really agree with what your dev is saying - he should correct these links first; put a noindex on these pages. Alternative - put a password on the dev site so it's only accessible with a password. If a lot of users are putting links to your dev site it could become more important than your main site. Google will try to choose the most appropriate site - but you have no guarantee that it will choose the right version. In any case - that's not the type of risk you should be willing to take.
Once this is done - you can request a removal of these pages via the search console.
If all pages are removed from the index you can adapt the robots.txt to prevent access to the Google & other bots. Do this only after all pages are removed - if not Google will never find the noindex directive.
Dirk
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 metrics
This discussion is strictly theoretical... I won't hold anyone to their answer. If I have 2 websites that are identical in every way and let's say the domain authority for both is 40, and I 301 redirect one site to the other, what would the DA become? Same question for single pages, both with a PA of 40. If I 301 redirect one page to the other, what does the PA become for the remaining page?
Moz Pro | | AMHC0 -
Duplicate title on Crawl
Ok, this should hopefully be a simple one. Not sure if this is a Moz crawl issue of redirect issue. Moz is reporting duplicate title for www.site.co.uk , site.co.uk and www.site.co.uk/home.aspx is this a canonical change or a moz setting I need to get this number lower.
Moz Pro | | smartcow0 -
Pages to Optimise Issues
HI, Can someone tell me why 2 A pages are showing up in red in the F Grade page ? I see Page title missing from the output and just curious if I need to addrss some issue. xpOW4tY.jpg
Moz Pro | | ecrmeuro0 -
Moz Crawl Test: WordPress sites with and without /feed and /trackback entires?
I have multiple WP websites and on some of the websites, on my Moz Crawl test, I see an entry for every blog post but also entries for /feed and /trackback for that single blog post. For example, www...com/someArticle www....com/someArticle/feed www...com/someArticle/trackback 1. Can anyone explain why the Crawl test is picking up the /feed and /trackback items? Is it simply because they are 301 redirects to the original post (www...com/someArticle)? 2. What setting(s) in WordPress are making this information appear? Or is it just that the site(s) that have the /feed and /trackback are displaying "normal" behavior for a WP site with a lot of trackbacks and feed entires? 3. Should /fee and /trackback, as well as /author be blocked in robots.txt? Thanks in advance for your advice and input!
Moz Pro | | Titan5520 -
Moz crawl only shows 2 pages, but we have more than 1000 pages.
Hi Guys Is there anyway we can test Moz crawler ? it showing only 2 pages crawls. We are running website on HTTPS ? Is HTTPS is issues for Moz ?
Moz Pro | | dotlineseo0 -
My Campaign only crawled 3 pages on my site
On my first crawl of a new campaign, the software only crawled 3 pages. XXXaceXXXscholarships.org any ideas?
Moz Pro | | Santaur0 -
Crawl Errors Confusing Me
The SEOMoz crawl tool is telling me that I have a slew of crawl errors on the blog of one domain. All are related to the MSNbot. And related to trackbacks (which we do want to block, right?) and attachments (makes sense to block those, too) ... any idea why these are crawl issues with MSNbot and not Google? My robots.txt is here: http://www.wevegotthekeys.com/robots.txt. Thanks, MJ
Moz Pro | | mjtaylor0 -
Canonical issue in open site explorer
When I look at my back links in OSE, I see two landing pages on my site that are really the same page. www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/(affiliate code here) These show different inbound link characteristics and page authority. The page in question has a rel=canonical tag. Am I doing something wrong?
Moz Pro | | EugeneF0