Is Moz Bot Broken?
-
Moz Bot says I have millions of issues with duplicate content.
One item says that it has over 50 duplicates! I downloaded the CSV it gave me to look into it.
All of my products have many different ways to get them, so I've set up rel=canonicals for the master one. So, I'd assume Mozbot would ignore those.
But the interesting thing I've found is that of these 50 duplicates, some of them (on the same CSV I downloaded) are completely different products, with completely different URL's. and completely different titles and completely different meta descriptions and completely different product descriptions.
So, 3 questions:
-
Is Moz bot broken?
-
Does it not recognize canonicals?
-
Why is it seeing 3 very different products as exactly the same product?
I'm so confused and since I work for a national company, the only way I can give actual examples is through a private message session. I guess I'm wondering if anyone else has come across this issue? Because I'm completely baffled.
-
-
Hello David,
Thanks for the response. I was able to receive a response in Chat yesterday that was very similar. All of the different URL's for the same product were pointing to the same canonical (the right one), so I was highly confused. Knowing that it's about Source Code helps a lot. Giant ecommerce sites like the one I'm working for it seems would have this issue more than smaller, boutique sites.
All of the products have their own unique product descriptions and titles & meta descriptions. So, for our brand, it is about the source code. I can suggest that the writers add more copy to their descriptions, but I can't imagine that will be a fun conversation.
I really appreciate the thoughtful answer to my question. Thanks so much!
-
Hello!
Our campaigns have 90% tolerance for duplicate content so this means if the page source code is at least 90% similar, it will be flagged.
Canonicals will only work if all pages that are truly identical each point to the same canonical URL
So if you have something like www.domain.com/productA/ as the primary URL for a single product
All 3 URLs below need to point to "www.domain.com/productA/" as the canonical
www.domain.com/productA/color=blue
www.domain.com/productA/category/tag
www.domain.com/productA/page1For another product www.domain/productB/
These will always report as a duplicate of productA if there isn't enough unique content to prevent them from being too similar due to the layout/template making up the majority of the source code.
For pages that are completely targeting separate products, those cannot be ignored so it will help to add more unique content to those pages to prevent getting flagged.
Here is a great article on how you can address duplicates for a site like yours: www.goinflow.com/duplicate-content-ecommerce-seo/
Hope this helps!
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 does Moz determine the number of keywords evident on a given page
How does Moz identify which keywords are evident on page and how many that can be on that page. Can any of these identified keywords lie on any other pages within site and to what degree-thanks
Moz Bar | | bickybeanie0 -
MOZ Freshweb reported mentions that really does not contain any mention - anyone else experiencing this?
MOZ Freshweb reported links from "traffic.fullcontentrss.com" that doesn't really contain any mention. Is this a MOZ error or is it maybe since fullcontentrss.com has a javascript that pulls data into their own RSS, MOZ ended up crawling partially and as a result not reporting the correct URL? Anyone else experiencing this anomaly?
Moz Bar | | CPR_PTANTONO0 -
What does the Bold/ Strong mean in Moz bar?
Under On-Page Elements in the Moz bar there is a Tag/ Location called Bold/ Strong. What does that mean?
Moz Bar | | TiffanyatElite0 -
Moz Crawler URL paramaters & duplicate content
Hi all, this is my first post on Moz Q&A 🙂 Questions: Does the Moz Crawler take into account rel="canonical" for search results pages with sorting / filtering URL parameters? How much time does it take for an issue to disappear from the issues list after it's been corrected? Does it come op in the next weekly report? I'm asking because the crawler is reporting 50k+ pages crawled, when in reality, this number should be closer to 1000. All pages with query parameters have the correct canonical tag pointing to the root URL, so I'm wondering whether I need to noindex the other pages for the crawler to report correct data?: Original (canonical URL): DOMAIN.COM/charters/search/mx/BS?search_location=cabo-san-lucas Filter active URL: DOMAIN.COM/charters/search/mx/BS?search_location=cabo-san-lucas&booking_date=&booking_days=1&booking_persons=1&priceFilter%5B%5D=0%2C500&includedPriceFilter%5B%5D=drinks-soft Also, if noindex is the only solution, will it impact the ranking of the pages involved? Note: Google and Bing are semi-successful in reporting index page count, each reporting around 2.5k result pages when using the site:DOMAIN.com query. The rel canonical tag was missing for a short period of time about 4 weeks ago, but since fixing the issue these pages still haven't been deindexed. Appreciate any suggestions regarding Moz Crawler & Google / Bing index count!
Moz Bar | | Vukan_Simic0 -
Moz Crawl Report showing non-existent Duplicate Errors since new reporting layout
Hi Moz Community, Since Moz changed to the new style of Crawl report, we've seen a jump in duplicate errors for our site. These duplicate errors do not exist and were not present on the Crawl reports before the report change and also we have not made any changes to the flagged pages on our site since then either. When you download the report data in csv it appears that the Moz report is mixing up data for two or more pages on the site. e.g.in csv for 'Page1' data, it will show the meta description for 'Page2' and 'Page2' shows that for 'Page1', so this then gets flagged as duplicate, however looking at the actual Meta description assigned onsite, both Page 1 and Page 2 are completely unique. Has anyone else experienced this and Moz Team - are you looking into this? Thanks, V
Moz Bar | | WWTeam1 -
Moz crawl suddenly shows much less pages from what I really have
Hi! Moz crawl suddenly shows much less pages from what I really have and from what they used to show after completing the crawl. Should I be worried? What could that be? Regards, Yossey
Moz Bar | | Joseph-Green-SEO1 -
Moz showing warnings for each dynamic link despite canonicalization?
As you can see in the attached image, Moz is showing a warning for each dynamic URL despite a rel=canonical tag. Is this by design? If so, it is frustrating seeing as it is really just the one page with many links . . . 9h5oDmr.png
Moz Bar | | BlueLinkERP0