Duplicate URL's in Sitemap? Is that a problem?
-
I submitted a sitemap to on Search Console - but noticed that there are duplicate URLs, is that a problem for Google?
-
Hi Luciana! If Logan and/or Matthew answered your question, mind marking one or both of their responses as a "Good Answer" (down in the lower-right of the responses)? It helps us keep track of things, and it gives them a few extra MozPoints.
-
Thank you everyone!
Basically for some reason the system I used to generate the sitemap just has some (not a whole lot) of duplicate URLs, they are exact duplicates. I figured Google would just overlook that.
This was helpful!
Thanks again,
Luciana
-
Generally speaking, this isn't the worst problem you can have with your XML sitemap. In an ideal world, you'll be able to remove duplicate URLs from the sitemap and only submit a single URL for each page. In reality, most larger sites I've encountered have some amount of duplicate content in their XML sitemap with no real major problems.
Duplicate content is really only a major problem if it is "deceptive" in nature. So long as this is just a normal consequence of your CMS, or similar, vs. an attempt to game the rankings you are probably fine. For more about that check out this support article.
The other problem you may encounter is with your search results for those duplicate pages. That article makes mention that Google will pick the URL they think is best (more about that here as well) and the URL they deem the best will be the URL that surfaces in the search results. That may or may not be the same URL you or your visitors would deem best. So, what you might find is Google picked a not great URL (like one with extra parameters) and with the not great URL appearing in the SERPs, your search result isn't as compelling to click on as some other version of the URL may be.
-
Hi,
This isn't necessarily a problem, but XML sitemaps should be as clean as possible before they're uploaded. i.e., no 301'd URLs, no 404s, no dupes, no parameter'd URLs, no canonicalized, etc..
Are they duplicates in the sense that one has caps, and the other doesn't? As in /example.html and /Example.html. If so, you'll want to fix that.
If they're identically formatted URLs, there should be no problem, but you're at duplicate content risk if they're different in anyway and not canonicalized.
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
-
Duplicated page titles
Dear friends, We have a problem which occurs on our page with duplicated page titles. Landlords are posting rooms on our page and most of them are giving the same name to the rooms and after that, we are getting more and more duplicated page titles. We are applying random whit this title tag: Accommodation for students in {city.name}: {name}. English title
On-Page Optimization | | Eurasmus.com
Certified student rooms in {city.name}: {name} English title
Erasmus room for students in {city.name} | {name} English title
Student room in {city.name}: {name} English title Also our title tag is sometimes to long but there is no possibility to make them shorter. I think. If anyone would have some idea be free to comment and help us. Kind regards Miško Macolić Tomičić0 -
Hiding body copy with a 'read more' drop down option
Hi I just want to confirm how potentially damaging using java script to hide lots of on page body copy with a 'read more' button is ? As per other moz Q&A threads i was told that best not to use Javascript to do this & instead "if you accomplish this with CSS and collapsible/expandable <DIV> tags it's totally fine" so thats what i advised my clients dev. However i recently noticed a big drop in rankings aprox 1 weeks after dev changing the body copy format (hiding alot of it behind a 'read more' button) so i asked them to confirm how they did implement it and they said: "done in javascript but on page load the text is defaulting to show" (which is contrary to my instructions) So how likely is it that this is causing problems ? since coincides with ranking drop OR if text is defaulting to show it should be ok/not cause probs ? And should i request that they redo as originally instructed (css & collapsible divs) asap ? All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Duplicate Page Content
Hi, I am new to the MOZ Pro community. I got the below message for many of my pages. We have a video site so all content in the page except the video link would be different. How can i handle such pages. Can we place adsense AD's on these pages? Duplicate Page Content Code and content on this page looks similar or identical to code and content on other pages on your site. Search engines may not know which pages are best to include in their index and rankings. Common fixes for this issue include 301 redirects, using the rel=canonical tag, and using the Parameter handling tool in Google Webmaster Central. For more information on duplicate content, visit http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content. Please help me to know how to handle this.. Regards
On-Page Optimization | | Nettv0 -
Which version of the homepage on the sitemap?
We have been wondering this for a while now. When we build our sitemaps, or when the yoast plugin does in WP we are often left with www.yourdomain.co.uk/ and www.yourdomain.co.uk/index.html in our sitemaps. Surely it isn't healthy to have both in the sitemap. Which one should we take out? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | EveronSEO0 -
How to fix this URL?
Moz crawl test only show one URL indexed for the website - http://ravisharrma.com/ Site:http://ravisharrma.com/ shows 3 URLs and how to fix URLs for the website?
On-Page Optimization | | Dan_Brown10 -
Slash at the end of a url
I keep reading contradicting information, so I figured I'll ask here. What's the best practice for slash '/' at the end of a URL? Should it be idealchooser.com/search/laptop/ or idealchooser.com/search/laptop (no trailing slash)? The options: 1. Accept both equally 2. Accept 1 and redirect the other with 301 3. Accept 1 and treat the other as a wrong URL returning 404 Which would be the best for SEO? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | corwin0 -
Image URL's have knocked my sub-pages down (WP)
I had most of my keywords within the top 10 for this site, some were even ranking in the top 5. For a possible minor boost, more-so to cover all the bases, I decided to add images to all of the pages, and they were uploaded as a gallery with most of the image file names being the same as the keyword. Thus, url's were created with our targeted phrases, extending off of the corresponding sub-page. After that, Google quickly picked up the url's to the images and began indexing them, when that occurred the sub-page which was to be the landing page, quickly tanked. Nothing else on-site changed besides the uploading of the images, so I'm sure they're conflicting and for whatever reason Google can't decide which page to index. The page that contains the images used, or the actual intended landing page. With WP I didn't see a way to not have them link to anything at all, and just be static when using a gallery, stock at least. So, my question is how can I quickly alleviate this problem and what should I do in the future to avoid this? I believe if I change link thumbnails to image file instead of attachment page, that should fix the issue... Then, I'll have dead URL's which I suppose I should 301 to the sub-page. Alternatively, is there a better solution that will work, I was also thinking about no-indexing the attachment URL's, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
On-Page Optimization | | JayAdams320 -
Creating a sitemap
what is the best place to go to create a xml sitemap? I have used xml-sitemap.com but it only does 500 pages. Any suggestions? Does a sitemap have value on the SEO front?
On-Page Optimization | | jgmayes0