Duplicate content due to csref
-
Hi,
When i go trough my page, i can see that alot of my csref codes result in duplicate content, when SeoMoz run their analysis of my pages.
Off course i get important knowledge through my csref codes, but im quite uncertain of how much it effects my SEO-results.
Does anyone have any insights in this? Should i be more cautios to use csref-codes or dosent it create problems that are big enough for me to worry about them.
-
Yes, to set up rel-canonical properly, every page that could conceivably be tagged with a csref= parameter should have a self-referencing canonical. The tags are easy to set up, in theory, but once you get into a large site and/or CMS, setting them up on dozens or hundreds of pages can be tricky. Ultimately, it's a more effective approach that has some other benefits (like scooping up stray duplicates that may have been created by other URL parameters), but it really depends on your development resources and how complex your site is.
-
Hi,
Thanks for quick and competent reply.
I guess the reason that google only have registred 8 pages, is that many of the pages we have csref on are campaign pages, and they havent "lived" for so long yet.
As i understand you, there are two ways to proceed with this. One beeing informing in Google Webmaster Tools that google should ignore the csref-parameter, and the other beeing the canonical links.
The first is quite straight forward i guess, its just a matter of registrering in Google Webmaster Tools, that all URLs with www.tryg.dk as main domain, should not be followed by Google.
The latter im not that sure of how to proceed with, its a matter of registrering every page with csref with a cannoical link? Or how is the best way to proceed with that.
-
The good news is that you only seem to have about 8 of these pages in the Google index. You can use this query on Google to see them:
site:www.tryg.dk inurl:csref
Ideally, I'd use the canonical tag on those pages to strip out the parameter and de-index any duplicates, but across the site that can be tricky. You could also tell Google Webmaster Tools to ignore the csref parameter via parameter handling - it's not quite as robust a solution, but it's a lot easier to implement.
-
Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
It is excactly a URL generated based on our tracking codes, f.eg. when i look in the list of duplicated content on our page here in SeoMoz, i get the following URLs:
http://www.tryg.dk/om-tryg/fakta-om-tryg/samarbejdspartnere/index.html?csref=Disclaimer_Nordea http://www.tryg.dk/om-tryg/fakta-om-tryg/samarbejdspartnere/index.html?csref=Bundmenu_Om_Tryg_Vores_Partnere
http://www.tryg.dk/om-tryg/fakta-om-tryg/samarbejdspartnere/index.html
The latter beeing the "original" page for this, and the two above beeing page URLs generated by URLs with csrefs, which are generated by our tracking via Omniture.
So my question is how i make sure that it do not have a negative effect on our SEO.
-
Apologies, but I'm not familiar with the csref parameter - could you tell me what information it passes or give me a sample URL (you can make it generic and mask your domain info)?
It sounds like some kind of tracking code, in which case it can definitely start to create duplicate content issues. You could probably use the rel=canonical tag to make Google "collapse" those pages, or you could tell Google to ignore the parameter in Google Webmaster Tools. Neither should impact your tracking.
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 Page Content
Hi, I just had my site crawled by the seomoz robot and it came back with some errors. Basically it seems the categories and dates are not crawling directly. I'm a SEO newbie here Below is a capture of the video of what I am talking about. Any ideas on how to fix this? Hkpekchp
Technical SEO | | mcardenal0 -
Duplicate Content - Products
When running a report it says we have lots of duplicate content. We are a e-commerce site that has about 45,000 sku's on the site. Products can be in multiple departments on the site. So the same products can show up on different pages of the site. Because of this the reports show multiple products with duplicate content. Is this an issue with google and site ranking? Is there a way to get around this issue?
Technical SEO | | shoedog1 -
Duplicate Content Issue
SEOMOZ is giving me a number of duplicate content warnings related to pages that have an email a friend and/or email when back in stock versions of a page. I thought I had those blocked via my robots.txt file which contains the following... Disallow: /EmailaFriend.asp Disallow: /Email_Me_When_Back_In_Stock.asp I had thought that the robot.txt file would solve this issue. Anyone have any ideas?
Technical SEO | | WaterSkis.com0 -
Content and url duplication?
One of the campaign tools flags one of my clients sites as having lots of duplicates. This is true in the sense the content is sort of boiler plate but with the different countries wording changed. The is same with the urls but they are different in the sense a couple of words have changed in the url`s. So its not the case of a cms or server issue as this seomoz advises. It doesnt need 301`s! Thing is in the niche, freight, transport operators, shipping, I can see many other sites doing the same thing and those sites have lots of similar pages ranking very well. In fact one site has over 300 keywords ranked on page 1-2, but it is a large site with an 12yo domain, which clearly helps. Of course having every page content unique is important, however, i suppose it is better than copy n paste from other sites. So its unique in that sense. Im hoping to convince the site owner to change the content over time for every country. A long process. My biggest problem for understanding duplication issues is that every tabloid or broadsheet media website would be canned from google as quite often they scrape Reuters or re-publish standard press releases on their sites as newsworthy content. So i have great doubt that there is a penalty for it. You only have to look and you can see media sites duplication everywhere, everyday, but they get ranked. I just think that google dont rank the worst cases of spammy duplication. They still index though I notice. So considering the business niche has very much the same content layout replicated content, which rank well, is this duplicate flag such a great worry? Many businesses sell the same service to many locations and its virtually impossible to re write the services in a dozen or so different ways.
Technical SEO | | xtopher660 -
Determining where duplicate content comes from...
I am getting duplicate content warnings on the SEOMOZ crawl. I don't know where the content is duplicated. Is there a site that will find duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | JML11790 -
Duplicate Content via a product feed & data
We have uniquely created all of our product content on our website (Titles, product descriptions, images etc). However, we are also a manufacturer of these products and supply to a number of trade customers. These customers often wish to setup their own websites to re-sell these products. In the past we have quite happily given this content in order to assist our customers sell on their sites. Generally we give them a 'data dump' of our web data and images, but reading about duplicate content this will lead to the search engines seeing lots of identical content on these customer sites. Whilst we wish to support our customers we do not want to harm our (and their) site by issuing lots of duplicate content around the web. Is there a way we can help them with the data without penalizing ourselves? The other issue is that we also take this data feed and use it to sell on both Amazon & Googlebase. Will using this identical data also rank as duplicate content as a quick search does show both our website and amazon product page? When creating Amazon listing do these need to vary from the standard website descriptions? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bwfc770 -
How do i deal with duplicate content on the same domain?
I'm trying to find out if there's a way we can combat similar content on different pages on the same site, without having to re write the whole lot? Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | indurain0 -
50+ duplicate content pages - Do we remove them all or 301?
We are working on a site that has 50+ pages that all have duplicate content (1 for each state, pretty much). Should we 301 all 50 of the URLs to one URL or should we just completely get rid of all the pages? Are there any steps to take when completely removing pages completely? (submit sitemap to google webmaster tools, etc) thanks!
Technical SEO | | Motava0