Multiple Instances of the Same Article
-
Hi, I'm having a problem I cannot solve about duplicate article postings.
As you will see from the attached images, I have a page with multiple variants of the same URL in google index and as well as duplicate title tag in the search console of webmasters tools. Its been several months I have been using canonical meta tags to resolve the issue, aka declare all variants to point to a single URL, however the problem remains. Its not just old articles that stay like that, even new articles show the same behaviour right when they are published even thought they are presented correctly with canonical links and sitemap as you will see from the example bellow.
Example URLs of the attached Image
-
All URLs belonging to the same article ID, have the same canonical link inside the html head.
-
Also because I have a separate mobile site, I also include in every desktop URL an "alternate" link to the mobile site.
-
At the Mobile Version of the Site, I have another canonical link, pointing back to the original Desktop URL. So the mobile site article version also has
-
Now, when it comes to the xml sitemap, I pass only the canonical URL and none of the other possible variants (to avoid multiple indexing), and I also point to the mobile version of the article.
<url><loc>http://www.neakriti.gr/?page=newsdetail&DocID=1300357</loc>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="http://mobile.neakriti.gr/fullarticle.php?docid=1300357"><lastmod>2016-02-20T21:44:05Z</lastmod>
<priority>0.6</priority>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
image:imageimage:lochttp://www.neakriti.gr/NewsASSET/neakriti-news-image.aspx?Doc=1300297</image:loc>
image:titleΟΦΗ</image:title></image:image></xhtml:link></url>
The above Sitemap snippet Source: http://www.neakriti.gr/WebServices/sitemap.aspx?&year=2016&month=2
The main sitemap of the website: http://www.neakriti.gr/WebServices/sitemap-index.aspxDespite my efforts you see that webmasters tools reports three variants for the desktop URL, and google search reports 4 URLs (3 different desktop variant urls and the mobile url).
I get this when I type the article code to see if what is indexed in google search: site:neakriti.gr 1300297
So far I believe I have done all I could in order to resolve the issue by addressing canonical links and alternate links, as well as correct sitemap.xml entry. I don't know what else to do... This was done several months ago and there is absolutelly no improvement.
Here is a more recent example of an article added 5 days ago (10-April-2016), just type
site:neakriti.gr 1300357
at google search and you will see the variants of the same article in google cache. Open the google cached page, and you will see the cached pages contain canonical link, but google doesn't obey the direction given there.Please help!
-
-
Hi all,
sorry for the delay, I am away on a business trip, this is why I stopped communicating the past few days.
I can confirm that the latest entries (those after March) come as a single instance.
However there are some minor exceptions like the one hereExample of a recent article indexed in both desktop (even though desktop url is not the canonical) and mobile URL
https://www.google.gr/search?q=site:neakriti.gr&biw=1527&bih=899&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIxODGt5_MAhUsKpoKHdcUAkYQ_AUIBigA&dpr=1.1#q=site:neakriti.gr+1315539&tbs=qdr:w&filter=0Also I noticed that with the "alternate" and "canonical" links the mobile version of the site doesn't get indexed anymore (with minor exceptions like the one above).
-
Hi Ioannis!
How's this going? We'd love an update.
-
Hmm, interestingly, when I followed your link, I only saw the canonical version of the article. Is this what you're seeing now?
Also, in response to your earlier question, yes, you can disallow parameters with robots.txt. If these canonical issues continue, that may be the best next step.
-
Thank you for your response, I will take a look at this.
However I have two questions regarding your suggestion
- Since I have canonical links at the loading page, doesn't that resolve the issue?
- the printerfriendly variation has a noindex meta at the head, shouldn't that be taken into account?
- Can I put regular expressions in my robots.txt? How can I block url params? Because printerfriendly and newsdetailsports are values of the "page" GET param
Infact the printerfriendly contains canonical link and noindex meta to inform search engines not to index content, and let them know where the original content exists
-
Hi there
The printer friendly URL is coming from the print this article button (attached) and the /default.aspx URL is coming from the ^ TOP button (attached).
What you could do is use your robots.txt to ignore these URLs. You can all tell Google what URL parameters to ignore, but please be EXTREMELY careful doing this. It's not a fine comb tool, not a hatchet.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments, good luck!
Patrick
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
-
Multiple Markups on The Same Page - Best Solution?
Hi there! I have a website that is build in react javascript, and I'm trying to use markup on my pages. They are mostly articles about general topics with common questions (about the topic), and for most articles I would like to use two markups: article markup + FAQ Markup ( for the questions in the article) article markup + how-to markup Can I do this or will Google get confused? Since I have two @type at the same time, for example @type": "FAQPage" and "@type": "Article". How should I think? I'm using https://schema.dev/ right now. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Leowa0 -
OK to have multiple local business structured data on one website?
Hello there, I'm working on implementing local business structured data for a website but we have multiple offices. Is it okay from a Google perspective to add different local business data on different pages of the website, or can I only use one set of local business data site wide? Many thanks, Gill.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cannetastic0 -
Can multiple geotargeting hreflang tags be set in one URL? International SEO question
Hi All, Thank you for this great post! I have a question please. If i target www.onedirect.co.nl/en/ in English for Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, are the tags below correct? English for Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg: http://www.example.co.nl/en/" hreflang="en-nl" /> http://www.example.co.nl/en/" hreflang="en-be" /> http://www.example.co.nl/en/" hreflang="en-lu" /> AND Targeting Holland and Belgium in Dutch: Pour la page www.onedirect.co.nl on peut inclure ce tag: http://www.example.co.nl" hreflang="nl-nl" /> http://www.example.co.nl" hreflang="nl-be" /> thanks a lot for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Onedirect_uk0 -
H3 Tags - Should I Link to my content Articles- ? And do I have to many H3 tags/ Links as it is ?
Hello All, On my ecommerce landing pages, I currently have links to my products as H3 Tags. I also have useful guides displayed on the page with links useful articles we have written (they currently go to my news section). I am wondering if I should put those article links as additional H3 tags as well for added seo benefit or do I have to many tags as it is ?. A link to my Landing Page I am talking about is - http://goo.gl/h838RW Screenshot of my h1-h6 tags - http://imgur.com/hLtX0n7 I enclose screenshot my guides and also of my H1-H6 tags. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
SEO structure question: Better to add similar (but distinct) content to multiple unique pages or make one unique page?
Not sure which approach would be more SEO ranking friendly? As we are a music store, we do instrument repairs on all instruments. Currently, I don't have much of any content about our repairs on our website... so I'm considering a couple different approaches of adding this content: Let's take Trumpet Repair for example: 1. I can auto write to the HTML body (say, at the end of the body) of our 20 Trumpets (each having their own page) we have for sale on our site, the verbiage of all repairs, services, rates, and other repair related detail. In my mind, the effect of this may be that: This added information does uniquely pertain to Trumpets only (excludes all other instrument repair info), which Google likes... but it would be duplicate Trumpet repair information over 20 pages.... which Google may not like? 2. Or I could auto write the repair details to the Trumpet's Category Page - either in the Body, Header, or Footer. This definitely reduces the redundancy of the repeating Trumpet repair info per Trumpet page, but it also reduces each Trumpet pages content depth... so I'm not sure which out weighs the other? 3. Write it to both category page & individual pages? Possibly valuable because the information is anchoring all around itself and supporting... or is that super duplication? 4. Of course, create a category dedicated to repairs then add a subcategory for each instrument and have the repair info there be completely unique to that page...- then in the body of each 20 Trumpets, tag an internal link to Trumpet Repair? Any suggestions greatly appreciated? Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_McLeish0 -
Article Marketing / Article Posting
I am working on the SEO on a few different websites and I have built out an article marketing campaign so that I can get high quality backlinks for my website. I have been writing the content myself and I have been manually building out the top Web 2.0, Article Directory, and Doc Sharing sites. today I was creating an account on squidoo and I wondered if it mattered if I had the username be one of two things: my keyword as a user name, like: [keyword+geotag] example: roofinghouston just my first and last name as the username (or just a username I always use) (The reason behind #1 would be to have the optimized keyword and location I am trying to rank for, inside of the username. The reason for #2 would be that I don't want to get into trouble by having "too much" optimization.) I know a bit about optimization and that getting your keyword out there is great in a lot of areas, but I am not sure if it looks "suspicious" if I have my username be the keyword+geotag. I am just worried that all of this hard work will be torn down if I look like I'm trying too hard to be optimized, etc etc. There is no one answer, I am mainly looking for shared experiences. If you do have a definite answer, then I would like that too 🙂 Thanks SEOMoz!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOWizards0 -
Is it worth paying to add an article to another website?
I have done some research into the types of sites that my competitors have inbound links from and upon closer inspection it appears that in many cases they would have had to pay for this kind of exposure. I already do a lot of guess blogging (for free) in an attempt to get my content out there, but is it worth paying to add my content (with backlinks) to established sites with good Domain Authority or PageRank? I, as I'm sure do a lot of you, have been inundated throughout my SEO career with offers to pay £X for this and £X for that. What is a good rate to pay? Is it dependent on what you expect to get back or is there an industry norm? Happy for general chatter on this as I want to try it but if I am to get the budget from my manager I need to be certain it will pay dividends and is worthwhile.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Multiple URL's exist for the same page, canonicaliazation issue?
All of the following URL's take me to the same page on my site: 1. www.mysite.com/category1/subcategory.aspx 2. www.mysite.com/subcategory.aspx 3. www.mysite.com/category1/category1/category1/subcategory.aspx All of those pages are canonicalized to #1, so is that okay? I was told the following my a company trying to make our sitemap: "the site's platform dynamically creates URLs that resolve as 200 and should be 404. This is a huge spider trap for any search engine and will make them wary of crawling the site." What would I need to do to fix this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt0