Duplicate content warnings
-
I have a ton of duplicate content warnings for my site poker-coaching.net, but I can't see where there are duplicate URLs. I cannot find any function where I could check the original URL vs a list of other URLs where the duplicate content is?
-
thanks for the help. I am trying to cover all bases here. Duplicate content was one concern, the other one is too high link density and bad incoming links.
I have downloaded a full backlinks report now using Majestic SEO (OSE only shows incoming links from 74 domains...).
I think I may have found the problem. I used to have a forum on that domain years ago which was hacked and used for a lot of spammy outgoing links for stuff like Cialis, Viagra etc.. Those guys also linked from other sites to my forum pages. Example:| from: http://www.grupoibira.com/foro/viewto...
| Anchor: buy flagyl in lincolnu... | 3 | to: http://www.poker-coaching.net/phpbb3/...
|
When I closed the forum and deleted the forum plugin, I redirected all forum pages to my main page which, under the circumstances was a bad mistake I guess. Because with the redirect, all those spammy links now end up pointing to my main page, right? So first, I have removed that redirect now.
But the problem remains that I still have plenty of links from spam sites pointing to URLs of my domain that do not exist any more.
Is there anything else I can do to remove those links or have Google remove/disregard them, or do you think a reconsideration request explaining the situation would help? -
Honestly, with only 235 indexed pages, it's pretty doubtful that duplicate content caused you an outright penalty (such as being hit with Panda). Given your industry, it's much more likely you've got a link-based penalty or link quality issue in play.
You do have a chunk of spammy blog comments and some low-value article marketing, for example:
http://undertheinfluence.nationaljournal.com/2010/02/summit-attendees.php
A bit of that is fine (and happens in your industry a lot), but when it's too much of your link profile too soon, you could be getting yourself into penalty territory.
-
Hey There,
Just to clarify, to see the source of those errors, you’ll need to download your Full Crawl Diagnostics CSV and open it up in something like Excel. In the first column, perform a search for the URL of the page you are looking for. When you find the correct row, look in the last column labeled referrer. This tells you the referral URL of the page where our crawlers first found the target URL. You can then visit this URL to find the source of your errors. If you need more help with that, check out this link: http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/20895376-crawl-diagnostics-csv
Hope that helps! I will look at the issue on the back end to see if they are actually duplicate content.
Have a great day,
Nick
-
Thanks for looking into this. Actually I checked the whole site by doing a batch search on Copyscape and there were only minor duplicate content issues. I resolved those by editing the content parts in question (on February 24th 2012).
Since I am desperately searching for the reasons why this site was penalized (and it def is...), it would be great to know why your duplicate content checker finds errors. Could only be related to multiple versions of one page on different URLs. I do have all http://mysitedotcom redirected to www.mysitedotcom, and the trailing slash/notrailingslash URL problem was also resolved by a redirect long ago, so I do not know where the problem lies.
Thanks for the help! -
I think our system has roughly a 90-95% threshold for duplicate content. The pages I'm seeing in your campaign don't look that high, so something is up - I'm checking with support.
For now, use the "Duplicate Page Title" section - that'll tend to give you exact duplicates. The duplicate content detection also covers thin content and near duplicates.
-
Yes that is what I first thought too. If only it were that easy.
But when I do, I see a couple of URLs that definitely do not have any duplicate content . Could it be that the dupe content check considers text in sitewide modules (like the modules "Poker News" and "Tips for ...." in www.poker-coaching.net) as duplicate content, because they appear on all pages?
This way, the duplicate content finding function is totally worthless. -
If you drill down into your campaign report into 'Crawl Diagnostics' you will see a dropdown menu that's named "Show". Select 'Duplicate Page Content'... you will see a graph with a table below it. To the right of the URL you will see a column named "Other URL's". The numbers in that column are live links to a page with the list of URL's with duplicate content. At least that is how it is displayed in my campaigns.
-
You will find this information at google webmaster tools and at seomoz campaing. There you will the information you need.
One easy way to avoid this is to include the rel canonical metag. You need to include in every page (pages you want to be the official one) inside the head tag the follow:
where ww.example.com/index.html is your page adress. Good luck!
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
-
Backlinks or content? What is the problem here?
My Moz ranking is 29, Ahrefs Domain rank is 49 and Majestic Citation flow is 44 whereas trust flow is 17. This is a plain question - If the above are the rankings for backlink problem, then where is the problem more likely to be found? Backlink or content? In more detail - My site has been dropping in search since the last few weeks. With these rankings, is it likely that a backlink related problem is there? I myself agree that some content is poor and thin and there is a problem of plagiarism also. But overall, do i keep focusing on content? I do not know how good are these rankings as shown above. My URL is www.marketing91.com Please let me know whether the backlink profile looks good or not? So that at least i am not worried that there is a backlink problem as well. (i will surely work on toxic links soon) I can worry only on content.
Reporting & Analytics | | marketing910 -
Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29\. We have been building good links from high DA pages and producing quality, regular content.
Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29. We have been building good links from high DA sites and producing regular, good quality content. Anyone able to offer any ideas why? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ProMOZ1231 -
Ecommerce, Product Content & Google Metrics
Hi I know Google has many different variations of what they consider to be thin content. I wondered if anyone has an idea of the best metric to determine what content you need to improve on your site? I work on a large e-commerce site so there are a thousands of product pages - all with product descriptions similar [but not duplicate] to competitors. I guess in terms of quantity, these pages don't have huge amounts of written content, so I'm wondering what Google classes as 'thin' on a product page: 1. Does Google just expect a conversion to deem that product page useful? And if not, what's the best metric to identify what works vs. what doesn't on product pages in Google's eyes. 2. If adding lots of product pages on mass is bad and will decrease overall authority? The content isn't duplicate, but may be fairly similar to other sites selling the same thing. I'm trying to get our reviews added directly to product pages rather than in a pop up to improve the unique content and I'm starting to write guides, FAQ's and I'll work towards getting video started - however, I'm the only SEO & we don't have much resource so this all takes time. If anyone else has any advice on steps to take that would be great 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | BeckyKey0 -
How often does google content experiments stats update?
From my experience it seems to update once per day (every 24 hours), can anyone confirm this is the case or have a link to an official announcement which confirms how often the data updates? It would be handy to know when it updates so we can see the latest information as it comes in.
Reporting & Analytics | | Twist3600 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content
Hi Just started use the Moz and got an analytics report today! There about 104 duplicate pages apparently, the problem is that they are not duplicates, but just the way the page has been listed with a description! The site is an Opencart and every page as got the name of the site followed by the product name for the page! How do you correct this issue?? Thank for your help
Reporting & Analytics | | DRSMPR1 -
Analytics - content performance
Hi guys, is there any way to group specific pages together in analytics and just see how they have peroformed visit wise, etc? I need to group some resort guides all with different names, it's tedious going through each one manually. Help much appreciated as always!
Reporting & Analytics | | pauledwards0 -
How serious are the Duplicate page content and Tags error?
I have a travel booking website which reserves flights, cars, hotels, vacation packages and Cruises. I encounter a huge number of Duplicate Page Title and Content error. This is expected because of the nature of my website. Say if you look for flights between Washington DC and London Heathrow you will at least get 60 different options with same content and title tags. How can I go about reducing the harm if any of duplicate content and meta tags on my website? Knowing that invariably I will have multiple pages with same content and tags? Would appreciate your advice? S.H
Reporting & Analytics | | sherohass0 -
Duplicate page content
I have a website which "houses" five different and completely separate departments, so the content is separated by subfolders. e.g. domain.com/department1 domain.com/department2 etc. and each have their own individual top navigation menus. There is an "About Us" section for each department which has about 6 subpages (Work for us, What we do, Awards etc.) but the problem is that the content for each department is exactly the same. The only difference is the navigation menu and the breadcrumbs. This isn't ideal as a change to one page means having to make the change to all 5 and from an SEO perspective it's duplicate content x5 (apart from the Nav). One solution I can see is to have the "About Us" section moved to the root level (domain.com/about-us) and have a generic nav, possibly with the department names on it. The only problem with this is that it disrupts the user journey if they are forced away from the department that they're chosen. Basically i'm looking for suggestions or examples of other sites that have got around this problem, I need inspiration! Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | haydennz0