How to avoid duplicate content on internal search results page?
-
Hi,
according to Webmaster Tools and Siteliner our website have an above-average amount of duplicate content.
Most of the pages are the search results pages, where it finds only one result. The only difference in this case are the TDK, H1 and the breadcrumbs. The rest of the layout is pretty static and similar.
Here is an example for two pages with "duplicate content":
https://soundbetter.com/search/Globo
https://soundbetter.com/search/Volvo
Edit: These are legitimate results that happen to have the same result. In this case we want users to be able to find the audio engineers by 'credits' (musicians they've worked with). Tags. We want users to rank for people searching for 'engineers who worked with'. And searching for two different artists (credit tags) returns this one service provider, with different urls (the tag being the search parameter) hence the duplicate content.
I guess every e-commerce/directory website faces this kind of issue.
What is the best practice to avoid duplicate content on search results page?
-
It really depends on your developers and your budget. I do development and SEO, so this is how I would handle it. On searches that are returning just one result, I would put something in place to see how many results are returned, if it is only one result returned, in the head of the page I would set the canonical url for the search page to the actual page that is being returned as the result.
If more result is being returned, you can handle that in many different ways. One way would be to create a pseudo category out of the results page. I would use this sparingly and only for popular search terms. But you could have an extension written for your site that can give you some on page control of the text, the url, the meta areas, and things like that. I wrote a module for a platform I use a couple of years ago that does something like it. http://blog.dh42.com/search-pages-landing-pages/ You can get the gist of the idea by reading about it there, but that is one good way to handle a limited number of them to get them to rank better. I would not do it with every search result though, you might get a penalty.
-
Sorry, I misread it. I think either or in regards to the robots or on page is applicable. I think the on page would make them fall out faster though.
-
I wouldn't do a no follow however
I agree. My solution was to use NOINDEX, FOLLOW.
-
Thanks Prestashop for your answer.
Is there another solution other than no-indexing all our search results?
Like many sites (yelp, tripadvisor and others) our search results help drive traffic. They aggregate the answer to questions that are asked in searches, such as 'recording studios in london'.
https://soundbetter.com/search/Recording Studio - Engineer/London, UK
-
I would add it to the robots.txt file. Depending on how your cms is set up, you can grab the search string from the current url and also use the presence of it to fire a no index as well. I wouldn't do a no follow however, there is nothing bad about following it, it is just the indexing of the search pages.
-
Hey Prestashop
To add a little more clarity - would you:
a.) add /search/ to robots.txt, like so:
Disallow: /search/or
b.) add noindex/nofollow at page level: like so:
in the search results page template.I would opt for option b, but it would be interested to hear your thoughts too and why.
Thanks,
-
No-index your search results. Most platforms do it by default to eliminate that error.
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
-
Should search pages be indexed?
Hey guys, I've always believed that search pages should be no-indexed but now I'm wondering if there is an argument to index them? Appreciate any thoughts!
Technical SEO | | RebekahVP0 -
If content is at the bottom of the page but the code is at the top, does Google know that the content is at the bottom?
I'm working on creating content for top category pages for an ecommerce site. I can put them under the left hand navigation bar, and that content would be near the top in the code. I can also put the content at the bottom center, where it would look nicer but be at the bottom of the code. What's the better approach? Thanks for reading!
Technical SEO | | DA20130 -
Duplicate pages on wordpress
I am doing SEO on a site which is running on WP. And it has all pages and categories duplicates on domain.com/site/ However, as it got crawled I saw that all domain.com/ pages have rel=canonical with main page tag (does it mean something?). Thing is I will fix permalinks structure and I think WP automatically redirects if it is changed from /?page_id= to /%category%/%postname%/ or /%postname%/ Isn't there something I miss? Second problems is a forum. After a crawl it found over 5k errors and over 5k warnings. Those are: Duplicate page content; Duplicate page title; Overly-Dynamic URLs; Missing Meta descr; Title Element too long. All those come from domain.com/forum/ (fortunately, there are no domain.com/site/forum duplicates). What could be an easy solution to this?
Technical SEO | | OVJ0 -
174 Duplicate Content Errors
How do I go about fixing these errors? There are all related to my tags. Thank you in advance for any help! Lisa
Technical SEO | | lisarein0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi, we need some help on resolving this duplicate content issue,. We have redirected both domains to this magento website. I guess now Google considered this as duplicate content. Our client wants both domain name to go to the same magento store. What is the safe way of letting Google know these are same company? Or this is not ideal to do this? thanks
Technical SEO | | solution.advisor0 -
Duplicate content
I'm getting an error showing that two separate pages have duplicate content. The pages are: | Help System: Domain Registration Agreement - Registrar Register4Less, Inc. http://register4less.com/faq/cache/11.html 1 27 1 Help System: Domain Registration Agreement - Register4Less Reseller (Tucows) http://register4less.com/faq/cache/7.html | These are both registration agreements, one for us (Register4Less, Inc.) as the registrar, and one for Tucows as the registrar. The pages are largely the same, but are in fact different. Is there a way to flag these pages as not being duplicate content? Thanks, Doug.
Technical SEO | | R4L0 -
Duplicate content
I have two page, where the second makes a duplicate content from the first Example:www.mysite.com/mypagewww.mysite.com/mysecondpageIf i insert still making duplicate content?Best regards,Wendel
Technical SEO | | peopleinteractive0 -
Duplicate content, Original source?
Hi there, say i have two websites with identicle content. website a had content on before website b - so will be seen as the original source? If the content was intended for website b, would taking it off a then make the orinal source to google then go to website b? I want website b to get the value of the content but it was put on website a first - would taking it off website a then give website b the full power of the content? Any help of advice much appreciated. Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0