Duplicate Content From Indexing of non- File Extension Page
-
Google somehow has indexed a page of mine without the .html extension. so they indexed www.samplepage.com/page, so I am showing duplicate content because Google also see's www.samplepage.com/page.html How can I force google or bing or whoever to only index and see the page including the .html extension? I know people are saying not to use the file extension on pages, but I want to, so please anybody...HELP!!!
-
Yeah I looked further into the URL removal, but I guess technically I did not meet the criteria....and honestly I am fearful other potential implications of removal....I guess I will just have to wait for the 301 to ick in. I just cant believe there is not a simple .htaccess code to cause all URL's to show the .html extension. I mean it is a simple thing to implement the reverse and have the extension dropped...I mean....good lord...
Thanks for all your help though Mike, I truly appreciate the efforts!
-
LAME! You may just want to let the 301 redirect you have in place take its course or remove the URL from Google's index since it was added by mistake anyway.
Mike
-
Nope. .....good lord....
-
Nope.
-
If that does not work, give this a whirl:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{3,4}
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html
-
Try:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^.]*[^./])$ /$1.html [R=301,L] -
That caused the same "500 Internal Server Error" .......
-
Try my code without all the other redirects, and see if it works. If it does, then add back the other redirects one by one until everything works.
-
Oh, and my site auditor is seeing it as a directory with a file in it??? Ugghhh....
-
Nope. Didn't work. I am seriously about to lose my mind with this....
-
Maybe give this a whirl:
If URL does not contain a period or end with a slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.|/$)
append .html to requested URL
RewriteRule (.*) /$1.html [L]
-
I get a server error when I do this? Sooo confused... Here is the htaccess changes I made. FYI...I have removed the code you told me to put in there temporarily so the site's not down. I attached the server error screenshot too...
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! .html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! /$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.htmlRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/ [R=301,L]RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganremodeling.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [R=301,L] -
You repeat this code a few times, maybe that's the problem? Pretty sure you only need it once:
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /The line:
RewriteEngine On
Also only needs to be included once in an htaccess file. You may want to remove all the other instances.
Try adding this code at the very top, after the first "RewriteEngine On":
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! .html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! /$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html -
Thanks Mike, you are awesome! I actually was thinking to do that, but I was concerned that it might have some larger implications?
I also just resubmitted a sitemap so hopefully that "might" speed up the crawl process...
Thanks again!
-
"I accidentally manually submitted the url to google and manually in submitted it to index and that when this issue began...."
It sounds like you accidently added this URL to the index. You can follow the procedure outlined below to request Google remove the specific URL from the index:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59819
I checked your site's structure using Screaming Frog and it does not appear that you are linking to any non-.html versions. If I perform a scan using one of your non-.html pages, it appears that it only links to itself.
Since you have the 301 redirect in place, you can choose to wait it out and Google should correct things eventually; otherwise, requesting Google remove the URL is a faster... PERMANENT process.
Good luck.
Mike
-
No it's not a wordpress, it was created with Dreamweaver. I didn't make sample and sample.html same page, but google is treating it that way.... I have implemented the 301, so I guess I just have to wait for a crawl
-
Thank you very for your input! When I implement into my .htacces what you suggested I get a "Internet 500 Server Error" ? Maybe it would help if I list what I currently have in my .htaccess I had to redirect some old domains and did canonical redirects and default non .index....I hope this help, I am at my wit's end... I also attached a screenshot of the webmaster warning... THANKS!!!
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hanneganconstructionllc.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.hremodeling.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/ [R=301,L]RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hanneganremodeling.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hanneganremodeling.com/$1 [R=301,L]Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase / -
Is this a wordpress based site ? What CMS are you using ? How were you able to get domain.com/sample and domain.com/sample.html be the same page ? Either way, canonical tag is the correct solution in this case. There's no need for a 301 and if you do 301 redirects, you are not really fixing the issue caused by your CMS System.
I would therefore strongly advise to use the canonical tag. That's the intended use of that tag.
-
A canonical tag won't physically redirect you when you visit the page, it just lets the search engines know which is the right page to index.
If you want to actually redirect using .htaccess, try using this code
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! .html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! /$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html
-
I tried the canonical and when I enter the url without the .html, it doesn't resolve to the url with the .html extension. I tried an .htaccess reirect...I am stumped, I can't get it to redirect automatically the the .html I accidentally manually submitted the url to google and manually in submitted it to index and that when this issue began....
-
Add a canonical tag to your header so that Google/Bing knows which version of your page they should be indexing.
You can also try looking into where the link to the non-html page is coming from. If it's an internal link, just change it so that Google doesn't continue to crawl it.
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
-
How do the Quoras of this world index their content?
I am helping a client index lots and lots of pages, more than one million pages. They can be seen as questions on Quora. In the Quora case, users are often looking for the answer on a specific question, nothing else. On Quora there is a structure setup on the homepage to let the spiders in. But I think mostly it is done with a lot of sitemaps and internal linking in relevancy terms and nothing else... Correct? Or am I missing something? I am going to index about a million question and answers, just like Quora. Now I have a hard time dealing with structuring these questions without just doing it for the search engines. Because nobody cares about structuring these questions. The user is interested in related questions and/or popular questions, so I want to structure them in that way too. This way every question page will be in the sitemap, but not all questions will have links from other question pages linking to them. These questions are super longtail and the idea is that when somebody searches this exact question we can supply them with the answer (onpage will be perfectly optimised for people searching this question). Competition is super low because it is all unique user generated content. I think best is just to put them in sitemaps and use an internal linking algorithm to make the popular and related questions rank better. I could even make sure every question has at least one other page linking to it, thoughts? Moz, do you think when publishing one million pages with quality Q/A pages, this strategy is enough to index them and to rank for the question searches? Or do I need to design a structure around it so it will all be crawled and each question will also receive at least one link from a "category" page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | freek270 -
A lot of news / Duplicate Content - what to do?
Hi All, I have a blog with a lot of content (news and pr messages), I want to move my blog to new domain. What is your recommendation? 1. Keep it as is. old articles -> 301 -> same article different URL
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPalmer
2. Remove all the duplicate content and create 301 from the old URL to my homepage.
3. Keep it as is, but add in the meta-tags NoIndex in duplicate articles. Thanks !0 -
Glossary index and individual pages create duplicate content. How much might this hurt me?
I've got a glossary on my site with an index page for each letter of the alphabet that has a definition. So the M section lists every definition (the whole definition). But each definition also has its own individual page (and we link to those pages internally so the user doesn't have to hunt down the entire M page). So I definitely have duplicate content ... 112 instances (112 terms). Maybe it's not so bad because each definition is just a short paragraph(?) How much does this hurt my potential ranking for each definition? How much does it hurt my site overall? Am I better off making the individual pages no-index? or canonicalizing them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LeadSEOlogist0 -
Product Page on Eccomerce Site ranking very poorly - Unique Product description but duplicate content on other tabs.
Hi All, I have a query regarding my Product pages on my eCommerce site. I have unique Product descriptions but some of the other page content on the other tabs i.e Hire Terms , Delivery , About the Hire Company - Are duplicated across ALL my products. Is that okay or how should I deal with them ? See example url of one of my products below below - http://goo.gl/aSFPqP My products currently rank very badly... 200 + so Any advice would be greatly appreciated thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Home page not being indexed
Hi Moz crew. I have two sites (one is a client's and one is mine). They are both Wordpress sites and both are hosted on WP Engine. They have both been set up for a long time, and are "on-page" optimized. Pages from each site are indexed, but Google is not indexing the homepage for either site. Just to be clear - I can set up and work on a Wordpress site, but am not a programmer. Both seem to be fine according to my Moz dashboard. I have Webmaster tools set up for each - and as far as I can tell (definitely not an exper in webmaster tools) they are okay. I have done the obvious and checked that the the box preventing Google from crawling is not checked, and I believe I have set up the proper re-directs and canonicals.Thanks in advance! Brent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EchelonSEO0 -
Do you add 404 page into robot file or just add no index tag?
Hi, got different opinion on this so i wanted to double check with your comment is. We've got /404.html page and I was wondering if you would add this page to robot text so it wouldn't be indexed or would you just add no index tag? What would be the best approach? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
K3 duplicate page content and title tags
I'm running a Joomla site, have just installed k2 as our blogging platform. Our Crawl Report with SEOMOZ shows a good bit of duplicate content and duplicate title tags with our K2 blog. We've installed sh404SEF. Will I need to go into sh404SEF each time we generate a blog entry to point the titles to one URL? If there is something simpler please advise. Thank you, Don
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | donaldmoore0 -
How important is the number of indexed pages?
I'm considering making a change to using AJAX filtered navigation on my e-commerce site. If I do this, the user experience will be significantly improved but the number of pages that Google finds on my site will go down significantly (in the 10,000's). It feels to me like our filtered navigation has grown out of control and we spend too much time worrying about the url structure of it - in some ways it's paralyzing us. I'd like to be able to focus on pages that matter (explicit Category and Sub-Category) pages and then just let ajax take care of filtering products below these levels. For customer usability this is smart. From the perspective of manageable code and long term design this also seems very smart -we can't continue to worry so much about filtered navigation. My concern is that losing so many indexed pages will have a large negative effect (however, we will reduce duplicate content and be able provide much better category and sub-category pages). We probably should have thought about this a year ago before Google indexed everything :-). Does anybody have any experience with this or insight on what to do? Thanks, -Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cre80