Duplicate title-tags with pagination and canonical
-
Some time back we implemented the Google recommendation for pagination (the rel="next/prev"). GWMT now reports 17K pages with duplicate title-tags (we have about 1,1m products on our site and about 50m pages indexed in Google)
As an example we have properties listed in various states and the category title would be "Properties for Sale in [state-name]".
A paginated search page or browsing a category (see also http://searchengineland.com/implementing-pagination-attributes-correctly-for-google-114970) would then include the following:
The title for each page is the same - so to avoid the duplicate title-tags issue, I would think one would have the following options:
- Ignore what Google says
- Change the canonical to http://www.site.com/property/state.html (which would then only show the first XX results)
- Append a page number to the title "Properties for Sale in [state-name] | Page XX"
- Have all paginated pages use noindex,follow - this would then result in no category page being indexed
Would you have the canonical point to the individual paginated page or the base page?
-
Dr. Pete,
Do you have any search/sort filters that may be spinning out other copies, beyond just the paginated series? That could be clouding the issue, and these things do get complicated. - How about this is the case? What would you recommend?
Gary
-
Since last week we have chosen to append the page number to the title. Let's see if/how GWMTs status changes.
I would think that the next possible flag would then be on the page-description on paginated pages
-
I suspect you're ok, then. I'd watch those GWT numbers, but unless you're seeing problems with indexation and ranking, then I'd just consider that a notice. I think you're handling it by the book, at least as well as currently possible with Google's changing and somewhat mixed signals on the subject.
-
Thanks for that answer. I am already using the pageNo in GWMT (as paginates). None of the searches spin out other copies - what I see in GWMT is only related to browsing through a product category and paginating.
-
Unfortunately, it can be really tough to tell if Google is honoring the rel=prev/next tags, but I've had gradually better luck with those tags this year. I honestly the GWT issue is a mistake on Google's part, and probably isn't a big deal. They do technically index all of the pages in the series, but the rel=prev/next tags should mitigate any ranking issues that could occur from near-duplicate content. You could add the page # to the title, but I doubt it would have any noticeable impact (other than possibly killing the GWT warning).
I would not canonical to the top page - that's specifically not recommended by Google and has fallen in disfavor over the past couple of years. Technically, you can canonical to a "View All" page, but that has its own issues (practically speaking - such as speed and usability).
Do you have any search/sort filters that may be spinning out other copies, beyond just the paginated series? That could be clouding the issue, and these things do get complicated.
I've had luck in the past with using META NOINDEX, FOLLOW on pages 2+ of pagination, but I've gradually switched to rel=prev/next. Google seems to be getting pickier about NOINDEX, and doesn't always follow the cues consistently. Unfortunately, this is true for all of the cues/tags these days.
Sorry, that's a very long way of saying that I suspect you're ok in this case, as long as the tags are properly implemented. You could tell GWT to ignore the page= parameter in parameter handling, but I'm honestly not sure what impact that has in conjunction with rel=prev/next. It might kill the warning, but the warning's just a warning.
-
I frequently use the page number in titles. It's not a bad solution where you want them all to get indexed.
Keep an eye on whether it affects CTR from the results though. I also like to ensure that there is always a link to the first page of results. This is useful for the user and also helps push more authority to that first page so that it is more likely to be the one that appears.
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
-
Question on canonicals
hi community let's say i have to 2 e-commerce sites selling the same English books in different currencies - one of the site serves the UK market ( users can purchase in sterling) while another one European markets ( user can purchase in euro). Sites are identical. SEO wise, while the "European" site homepage has a good ranking across major search engines in europe, product pages do not rank very well at all. Since site is a .com too it s hard to push it in local search engines. I would like then to push one of the sites across all search engines,tackling duplicate content etc.Geotargeting would make the rest. I would like to add canonicals tag pointing at the UK version across all EU site product pages, while leaving the EU homepage rank. I have 2 doubts though: is it ok to have canonical tags pointing at an external site. is it ok to have part of a site with canonical tags, while other parts are left ranking?
Technical SEO | | Mrlocicero0 -
Missing Titles?
Hi All, Don't know if anyone can help me but Moz is showing lots of errors for my website for not having title tags for pages when they do? Also when a user refines they search results it is seeing every instance of this as a new page - we have canonical tags across the site to stop this happening yet it is still occurring each time - is there anything else we can do to resolve this problem? It's creating lots of errors for us. Thanks, Laura
Technical SEO | | Citybase0 -
Rel=canonical overkill on duplicate content?
Our site has many different health centers - many of which contain duplicate content since there is topic crossover between health centers. I am using rel canonical to deal with this. My question is this: Is there a tipping point for duplicate content where Google might begin to penalize a site even if it has the rel canonical tags in place on cloned content? As an extreme example, a site could have 10 pieces of original content, but could then clone and organize this content in 5 different directories across the site each with a new url. This would ultimately result in the site having more "cloned" content than original content. Is this at all problematic even if the rel canonical is in place on all cloned content? Thanks in advance for any replies. Eric
Technical SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
My number of duplicate page title and temporary redirect warnings increased after I enabled Canonical urls. Why? Is this normal?
After receiving my first SEO moz report, I had some duplicate page titles and temporary redirects. I was told enabling Canonical urls would take of this. I enabled the Canonical URLs, but the next report showed that both of those problems had increased three fold after enabled the canonical urls! What happened?
Technical SEO | | btsseo780 -
Is Duplicate title made Sanbox?
I use Seomoz tool and discover that my webpage have 1000 duplicate title, my keyword with domain key 's position is 25, but i dont have any keyword ontop 100 of google. Is the Duplicate title effect in the key word position or SEO ? right?
Technical SEO | | magician0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi - We are due to launch a .com version of our site, with the ability to put prices into local currency, whereas our .co.uk site will be solely £. If the content on both the .com and .co.uk sites is the same (at product level mainly), will we be penalised? What is the best way to get around this?
Technical SEO | | swgolf1230 -
High number of Duplicate Page titles and Content related to index.php
It appears that every page on our site (www.bridgewinners.com) also creates a version of itself with a suffix. This results in Seomoz indicating that there are thousands of duplicate titles and content. 1. Does this matter? If so, how much? 2. How do I eliminate this (we are using joomla)? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jfeld2220 -
Duplicate content?
I have a question regarding a warning that I got on one of my websites, it says Duplicate content. I'm canonical url:s and is also using blocking Google out from pages that you are warning me about. The pages are not indexed by Google, why do I get the warnings? Thanks for great seotools! 3M5AY.png
Technical SEO | | bnbjbbkb0