PLEASE HELP - Old query string URL causing problems
-
For a long time, we were ranking 1st/2nd for the term "Manual handling training". That was until about 5 days ago when I realised that Google had started to index not only a query stringed URL, but also an old version of the URL.
What was even weirder was that when you clicked on the result it 301 redirected to the page that it was meant to display...
The wrong URL that Google had started to index was: www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling?channel=retail
The correct URL that it should have been indexing is: https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling-training
I can't get my head around why it has done this as a 301 was in place already and we use rel canonical tags which point to the main parent pages.
Anyway, we slapped a noindex tag in our robots.txt file to stop that page from being indexed, which worked but now I can't get the correct page to be indexed, even after a Google fetch.
After inspecting the correct URL in the new search console I discovered that Google has ignored the rel canonical on the page (Which points to itself) and has selected the wrong, query stringed URL as the canonical. Why? and how do I rectify this?
-
Brilliant! good luck with it. Please do me a favour and hit the 'good answer' button thanks
-
Thanks Nigel,
This is being actioned
Hugely appreciate your time.
-
Hi iHasco
It doesn't only affect this URL. I only quickly looked at the sitemap (https://www.ihasco.co.uk/site-map/google) but found that other one as well. I don't know what the defunct page URL so have no idea why it is listing that but it (Google) is not listing the main one or the one with the slash. The fact is that both work so you need to get rid of one.
I can't possibly explain how your dynamic system has done this I can only illustrate the problem and give you a solution. I hope you deem the solution more than just 'an interesting point'
Regards
Nigel
-
Hi Nigel,
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
That's an interesting point but why would this problem only affect this URL?
We have over 80 pages (courses) which use the same template. These pages are dynamic, so if one page is experiencing problems in Google (such as pulling an old URL) why aren't the other 79 pages doing the same?
Also, I understand that the trailing slash could be seen as a duplicate page in Google, however, this doesn’t explain why it’s pulling an old (now redirected) URL of that page? We don’t use that old URL anywhere on our site, no even in the sitemap.
Many thanks,
-
Hi iHasco
Neither seem to rank.
What I think
Your sitemap has the wrong URL in it - with a trailing slash at the end: https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling-training/
The website has a version without a trailing slash! https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling-trainingThis means there are effectively two versions of this page so you have perfect duplication as both are regarded as different by Google.
The Solution: 1. Remove the trailing slash version of the page.
2. 301 redirect the trailing slash to the non-trailing slash in htaccess
3. Check for other problems in the sitemap - eg you have a page https://www.ihasco.co.uk/terms-and-policies/terms-and-conditions-of-use/ in the sitemap which redirects to **https://www.ihasco.co.uk/terms-and-policies. **If there is a redirect or a canonical in place DO NOT put the original URLs in the sitemap!
4. Put a general directive in htaccess 301'ing all trailing slashes to non-trailing slashes to avoid any further problems.
5. For a quicker result go to Seach Console and physically remove the trailing slash version of the page. It'll be gone tomorrow. At the same time to a Fetch Google for the correct URL - you will be back at number 1-3 within a week.You basically have a situation where you have duplicate content, Google doesn't know which version to rank so ranks neither. You also have a problem where Google does not trust your sitemap so make sure the sitemap is a pure reflection of what is on the site. If you don't then Google will not trust your 301s or canonicals and could end up ranking other spurious pages.
I hope that helps
Regards
Nigel
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
-
JavaScript navigation causing an SEO problem?
Hi - I'm looking at a site using JavaScript dropdown navigation - Google can crawl the whole site but my thinking is this - If I ensure the dropdown navigation is functioning fully when JS is switched off, I may facilitate the search engine bots? At the moment I can't get any dropdown effect if I turn JS off on the site but if I look at a cached page (text version) the dropdown links are visible and working. I am wondering whether any crawl benefit is there if you take this a step further and ensure the drop downs are actually visible and working when JS is switched off? I would welcome your thoughts on this. Thanks in advance, Luke - 07966 729775
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Website Re-Launch - New URLS / Old URL WMT
Hello... We recently re-launched website with a new CMS (Magento). We kept the same domain name, however most of the structure changed. We were diligent about inputting the 301 redirects. The domain is over 15 years old and has tons of link equity and history. Today marks 27 days since launch...And Google Webmaster Tools showed me a recently detected (dated two days ago) URL from the old structure. Our natural search traffic has take a slow dive since launch...Any thoughts? Some background info: The old site did not have a sitemap.xml. The relaunched site does. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 19prince0 -
Problems with ecommerce filters causing duplicate content.
We have an ecommerce website with 700 pages. Due to the implementation of filters, we are seeing upto 11,000 pages being indexed where the filter tag is apphended to the URL. This is causing duplicate content issues across the site. We tried adding "nofollow" to all the filters, we have also tried adding canonical tags, which it seems are being ignored. So how can we fix this? We are now toying with 2 other ideas to fix this issue; adding "no index" to all filtered pages making the filters uncrawble using javascript Has anyone else encountered this issue? If so what did you do to combat this and was it successful?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Two homepage urls
We have two different homepages for our website. One is designed for daytime users (i.e. businesses), whereas the second night version is designed with home consumers in mind. Is this hurting our SEO by having two homepage urls, instead of just building a strong presence around one? We have set up canonical meta on each one: On the night version: domain.com/indexnight.html we have a On the day version: domain.com/index.html we have a It seems to me that we should just choose one of them and set up a permanent 301 redirect from one to the other. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JessieT0 -
Pretty URLs... do they matter?
Given the following urls: example.com/warriors/ninjas/ example.com/warriors/ninjas/cid=WRS-NIN01 Is there any difference from an SEO perspective? Aesthetically the 2nd bugs me but that's not a statistical difference. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nymbot0 -
Indexed non existent pages, problem appeared after we 301d the url/index to the url.
I recently read that if a site has 2 pages that are live such as: http://www.url.com/index and http://www.url.com/ will come up as duplicate if they are both live... I read that it's best to 301 redirect the http://www.url.com/index and http://www.url.com/. I read that this helps avoid duplicate content and keep all the link juice on one page. We did the 301 for one of our clients and we got about 20,000 errors that did not exist. The errors are of pages that are indexed but do not exist on the server. We are assuming that these indexed (nonexistent) pages are somehow linked to the http://www.url.com/index The links are showing 200 OK. We took off the 301 redirect from the http://www.url.com/index page however now we still have 2 exaact pages, www.url.com/index and http://www.url.com/. What is the best way to solve this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
DMCA Complaint to Google - HELP
I have several sites copying my content, which I found out via Copyscape.com. Unfortunately, this is giving me duplicate content. I filed a DMCA complaint through Google and the infringing pages were approved but the pages still remain. Can someone please help me understand this better? I thought Google was supposed to remove these pages? Am I supposed to content the site owner to get the content removed or are their pages simply de-indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tutugirl0 -
Duplicate Content Help
seomoz tool gives me back duplicate content on both these URL's http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/ http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/index.php I want to use http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/ as this just look nice & clean. What would be best practice to fix this issue? Kind Regards Eddie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780