Duplicate content issue
-
Hi everyone,
I have an issue determining what type of duplicate content I have.
www.example.com/index.php?mact=Calendar,m57663,default,1&m57663return_id=116&m57663detailpage=&m57663year=2011&m57663month=6&m57663day=19&m57663display=list&m57663return_link=1&m57663detail=1&m57663lang=en_GB&m57663returnid=116&page=116
Since I am not an coding expert, to me it looks like it is a URL parameter duplicate content. Is it?
At the same time "return_id" would makes me think it is a session id duplicate content. I am confused about how to determine different types of duplicate content, even by reading articles on Seomoz about it: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content.
Could someone help me on how to recognize different types of duplicate content?
Thank you!
-
Thank you guys for being so helpful!!:)
-
Hello Jeff, I would like to say first that lots of sites have duplicate content problems. For the most part, this is not a huge issue. When search engines find duplicate content they choose one of the pages to list in the index, and then will ignore the other. This assumes, of course, that the nature of the duplicate content is not so bad that it would lead to the search engine wanting to ban you. This can happen if a review of your situation causes them to believe that you are deliberately trying to rank multiple times for the same search terms.
Here is a link that fixes the problem of duplicate content :
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
-
Let me try.
1. The answer to your first question is that it only matters if you're trying to figure out how to handle it programmaticaly. In this case you might have to ask the developer if this is being done by a session id. To me it looks more like a URL parameter, but without a live example I wouldnt know, could you provide the website in question? If not try visiting the website once, clear your cache and then visit again and see if the number after "return_id" changes. if it changes that is a session id. If it stays the same have a friend visit the website in the same manor and see if the number stays the same, if it changes then there's a good chance that this is a session id.
No matter if it's a session id adding it or not "return_id" is technically a URL parameter that is triggered by a session id.
2. The second question is still a bit vague, so let me see if this is correct. are you asking how to treat the duplicate content once you know what is causing it? If so, then follow these rules.
If the content changes significantly in the presence of the session id or parameter then this is not duplicate content. If the content does change do the following:
- make sure to use rel canonical for the root URL. In your example that would be: www.example.com/index.php?mact=Calendar
- set the URL parameters in Google and Bings webmaster tools to treat the parameter correctly.
- When the parameter or session id is present add the noindex, follow robots tag. this will allow the bots to spider through and pass on link juice in the event that someone links to your parameter versions
I think you have a larger issue, which is that your website's code is using the index.php to generate all of the pages, in the example that is calendar. This is a common mistake that programmers make since they work to do things as quickly and efficiently as possible. Its far easier to keep all of the code in the one file than to create several different dynamic files that work with each other.
If you dont have the ability to break this down and generate out different pages you might be able to use URL Rewrites to make browsers and bots think the URLs are actually different.
-
Thank you for your answers but I guess I didn't formulate properly my question.
My 1st question was: What kind of duplicate content is it?
- session id
- or url parameter
My second question is: How do you differentiate them? What do you look at when a duplicate content is a session id one or a url parameter issue?
-
You can determine if you have duplicate content several ways. search in google site:example.com and see how many pages google knows at your website. Also, when you are on page with this crazy url, open source code and see if a page has rel="canonical" tag. In your page that would be the best solution to signal robot that this is the same page as your index.php page.
Also, you can try Xenu. good and fast program to run your site on duplicates.
Hope it helps, you can show your website so we can take a look.
-
Hi Jeff,
index.php is the same as index.php?something=something&anotherthing=somethinglese
Each page should have a different url like index.php and page.php instead of always using index.php
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
-
Duplicate Content and Subdirectories
Hi there and thank you in advance for your help! I'm seeking guidance on how to structure a resources directory (white papers, webinars, etc.) while avoiding duplicate content penalties. If you go to /resources on our site, there is filter function. If you filter for webinars, the URL becomes /resources/?type=webinar We didn't want that dynamic URL to be the primary URL for webinars, so we created a new page with the URL /resources/webinar that lists all of our webinars and includes a featured webinar up top. However, the same webinar titles now appear on the /resources page and the /resources/webinar page. Will that cause duplicate content issues? P.S. Not sure if it matters, but we also changed the URLs for the individual resource pages to include the resource type. For example, one of our webinar URLs is /resources/webinar/forecasting-your-revenue Thank you!
Technical SEO | | SAIM_Marketing0 -
I have duplicate content but // are causing them
I have 3 pages duplicated just by a / Example: https://intercallsystems.com/intercall-nurse-call-systems**//**
Technical SEO | | Renalynd
https://intercallsystems.com/intercall-nurse-call-systems**/** What would cause this?? And how would I fix it? Thanks! Rena0 -
Duplicate Content/Similar Pages
Hello, I'm working on our site and I'm coming into an issue with the duplicate content. Our company manufactures heavy-duty mobile lifts. We have two main lifts. They are the same, except for capacity. We want to keep the format similar and the owner of the company wants each lift to have its own dedicated page. Obviously, since the layout is the same and content is similar I'm getting the duplicate content issue. We also have a section of our accessories and a section of our parts. Each of these sections have individual pages for the accessory/part. Again, the pages are laid out in a similar fashion to keep the cohesiveness, and the content is different, however similar. Meaning different terminology, part numbers, stock numbers, etc., but the overall wording is similar. What can I do to combat these issues? I think our ratings are dropping due to the duplicate content.
Technical SEO | | slecinc0 -
Purchasing duplicate content
Morning all, I have a client who is planning to expand their product range (online dictionary sites) to new markets and are considering the acquisition of data sets from low ranked competitors to supplement their own original data. They are quite large content sets and would mean a very high percentage of the site (hosted on a new sub domain) would be made up of duplicate content. Just to clarify, the competitor's content would stay online as well. I need to lay out the pros and cons of taking this approach so that they can move forward knowing the full facts. As I see it, this approach would mean forgoing ranking for most of the site and would need a heavy dose of original content as well as supplementing the data on page to build around the data. My main concern would be that launching with this level of duplicate data would end up damaging the authority of the site and subsequently the overall domain. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Technical SEO | | BackPack851 -
Hreflang and possible duplicate content SEO issue
| 0 <a class="vote-down-off" title="This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful">down vote</a> favorite | Hey community, my first question here 🙂 Imagine there is a page with video, it has hreflang tags setup, to lead let's say German visitors to /de/ folder... So, on that German version of page, everything like menus, navigation and such are in German, but the video is the same, the title of the video (H1 tag) is the same, <title></code></strong> and <strong><code>meta description</code></strong> is the same as on the original English page. It means that general (English) page and German version of it has the same key content in English.</p> <p>To me it seems to be a SEO duplicate content issue. As I know, Google doesn't think that content is duplicate, if it is properly translated to other language.</p> <p>Does my explained case mean that the content will be detected by Google as duplicate?</p> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table></title> |
Technical SEO | | poiseo0 -
174 Duplicate Content Errors
How do I go about fixing these errors? There are all related to my tags. Thank you in advance for any help! Lisa
Technical SEO | | lisarein0 -
How different should content be so that it is not considered duplicate?
I am making a 2nd website for the same company. The name of the company, our services, keywords and contact info will show up several times within the text of both websites. The overall text and paragraphs will be different but some info may be repeated on both sites. Should I continue this? What precautions should I take?
Technical SEO | | savva0 -
Multiple URLs in CMS - duplicate content issue?
So about a month ago, we finally ported our site over to a content management system called Umbraco. Overall, it's okay, and certainly better than what we had before (i.e. nothing - just static pages). However, I did discover a problem with the URL management within the system. We had a number of pages that existed as follows: sparkenergy.com/state/name However, they exist now within certain folders, like so: sparkenergy.com/about-us/service-map/name So we had an aliasing system set up whereby you could call the URL basically whatever you want, so that allowed us to retain the old URL structure. However, we have found that the alias does not override, but just adds another option to finding a page. Which means the same pages can open under at least two different URLs, such as http://www.sparkenergy.com/state/texas and http://www.sparkenergy.com/about-us/service-map/texas. I've tried pointing to the aliased URL in other parts of the site with the rel canonical tag, without success. How much of a problem is this with respect to duplicate content? Should we bite the bullet, remove the aliased URLs and do 301s to the new folder structure?
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0