Pagination & duplicate meta
-
Hi
I have a few pages flagged for duplicate meta e.g.:
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenchesI can;t see anything wrong with the pagination & other pages have the same code, but aren't flagged for duplicate:
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=2
I can't see to find the issue - any ideas?
Becky
-
Regarding the links which point to pages, but include the hash. If Google is only seeing this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches
Will it be seeing these as pages which have duplicate content?
-
No problem thank you
-
I could write out how to implements rel next prev but it would be better to look at these articles
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/ugc/seo-guide-to-google-webmaster-recommendations-for-pagination
-
Hi,
Yes there is javascript to sort the results on those pages.
Is the solution to have these URLs page=2 etc, correctly linked from the page number?
Then ensure rel/prev are used correctly?
I'm also concerned about the content we have at the bottom of the products being shown as duplicate.
-
Hi
Thank you for this. One thing I am confused about is, if Google doesn't crawl those paginated pages, why will it pick up the meta as duplicate?
Thank you for highlighting the links - I hadn't noticed this before.
Where should the rel next prev be coded?
Thanks for your feedback
-
I get how hashes work.
Crawlers do see the page=2, page=3, etc. URLs because the right/left navigation buttons to the side of the numbers link to them. I just proved this by crawling the site in Screaming Frog and doing a search for page=, they're all found.
Becky, there's something larger at play here, potentially with your CMS configuration. It looks like the navigation for paginated sections is messed up. Mouse-over the links and look at the URL in the lower left of your browser, and then click the link and look at your URL bar. The results are very different from what you see on mouse-over. I'd recommend your first step is to talk to your developers and see if they can fix this issue. As VivaCa mentioned, you could be getting false alarms on duplicates here from Moz, so you might be clear with the canonical and prev/next fix - Screaming Frog finds all of those tags properly.
-
I think you guys are missing the point. Anything after the hashtag is ignored. As far as the crawler is concerned, all the links to page 2,3,4,5 are all the same URL - that is why the crawler does not see the other pages.
There is no issue with canonical or how it interacts with the rel next prev. My point on the canonical was simply for illustrative purposes and looks to be implemented correctly.
Separate from the canonical the rel next prevs are setup incorrectly and that needs to be fixed once the issue with how the paginated pages are linked to using the URL with the hashtag parameters.
-
We have the exact same issue, and I found this reply from Dr. Pete helpful regarding this (assuming that what he says is still true): https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/pagination-issues-on-e-commerce-site-duplicate-page-title-and-content-on-moz-crawl
His reply:
Unfortunately, Moz Analytics/PRO don't process rel=prev/next properly at this time, so we may give false alarms on those pages, even if the tags are properly implemented.
It can be tricky, but Google recommends a combination of rel=canonical and rel=prev/next. Use the canonical tag to keep sorts from getting indexed, and then use rel=prev/next for the pagination itself. Your 3rd example (page=2...) should rel=prev/next to the URLs before and after it but then canonical to the page=2 variation with no sort parameter. It can get complicated fast, unfortunately, but typically rel=canonical can be implemented in the template. So, once you've got it figured out, it'll work for the entire site.
-
As far as I am aware, there is nothing wrong with using both canonicals and pagination on the same page. Google says this as well here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
We have pagination and canonicals set up as suggested in the Google article and also have some issues with Moz saying we have duplicate content, which the pagination should "fix" as far as I understand it.
From the article:
rel="next"
andrel="prev"
are orthogonal concepts torel="canonical"
. You can include both declarations. For example, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2&sessionid=123 may contain: -
View source on both pages.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000746.htm
Or use the handy Moz bar to view the descriptions
Both your title and meta are exactly the same - aka they are duplicates
view-source:http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches
<title>Workbenches & Work Stations from Key</title>view-source:http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2
<title>Workbenches & Work Stations from Key</title>You can remedy this by simply adding "- Page #" at the end of your title and description, where # is whatever page in the pagination you are at.
The reason why the other pages in your pagination are not showing up with the duplicate issue is that you are hiding them from Google.
When I am on Page 2 and I click on the buttons for page 3,4,5 etc - here are the links that are shown
Page 3 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2#productBeginIndex:60&orderBy:5&pageView:list&
Page 4 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2#productBeginIndex:90&orderBy:5&pageView:list&
Page 5 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2#productBeginIndex:120&orderBy:5&pageView:list&
These are the links that people can click on to navigate at the bottom of the page. Everything behind the hash is ignored by Google. It is a clever way to hide parameters, but when Google looks at this it is just seeing links to the exact same page. Likewise, on that page you have a canonical link to page 2, so even if Google could see the parameters you are giving it a directive that tells Google that Page 2 is the only page that exists.
I can see that you are using rel next prev to designate Page 3 as Page 3 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 etc, but you are not coding the rel next prev properly by putting it up in the header with the meta tags.
In summary
- You have duplicate title and meta tags for all your paginated pages
- You are not linking to your paginated pages properly within the user navigation
- You are incorrectly using rel next prev
-
Hi,
I can't explain why Moz throws a duplicate for one and not the other, that's odd. I did look at the source code for both of the paginated URLs you posted, and it looks like rel=prev/next is mostly right, but a couple suggestions:
- Remove the self-referring canonical tags - On this URL (http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=2) you've got a canonical that points to itself, that's in conflict with the rel=prev/next tags. Rel=prev/next should be used in place of canonical tags, not in conjunction with.
- The one exception to my point about canonicals above: on page=1 of your pagination, canonicalize that to the root. Example, http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=1 should canonicalize to http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets, since those are identical in actual displayed content.
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
-
Duplicate H1 Question & Landing Page help
Hi We have 2 H1's on this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/heavy-duty-shelving Our webmaster has put one as display:none - but isn't this just going to look like we're keyword spamming & trying to hide it? OK now I;m looking I am seeing more wrong with this page... The width buttons at the top as h2's...& they link to facet pages? Won't this just waste crawl budget? and every product title/user guide title etc are all H2's.... I just need to put a plan together to give to our dev team on what should be updated Any tips would be great. Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Country Code Top Level Domains & Duplicate Content
Hi looking to launch in a new market, currently we have a .com.au domain which is geo-targeted to Australia. We want to launch in New Zealand which is ends with .co.nz If i duplicate the Australian based site completely on the new .co.nz domain name, would i face duplicate content issues from a SEO standpoint?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright
Even though it's on a completely separate country code. Or is it still advised tosetup hreflang tag across both of the domains? Cheers.0 -
Proxy Servers & SEO
Does putting a blog on a proxy server (the pointed at the main site) hurt SEO? i.e. can Google tell? And if they can, does it matter? My server people won't use PHP on their servers but we want a Wordpress blog. So their suggested solution is that they put the blog on a proxy server and point it at the ourdomain.com/blog subfolder on our site. So to all intents and purposes it's hosted in the same place. They assure me this is normal practice and point out that our (main site) images are already being sourced from a CDN. Obviously we'll deal with Google not seeing two separate versions of the same site. But apart from this, is there any negative effect we could suffer from in SEO terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abisti20 -
How bad is duplicate content for ecommerce sites?
We have multiple eCommerce sites which not only share products across domains but also across categories within a single domain. Examples: http://www.artisancraftedhome.com/sinks-tubs/kitchen-sinks/two-tone-sinks/medium-rounded-front-farmhouse-sink-two-tone-scroll http://www.coppersinksonline.com/copper-kitchen-and-farmhouse-sinks/two-tone-kitchen-farmhouse-sinks/medium-rounded-front-farmhouse-sink-two-tone-scroll http://www.coppersinksonline.com/copper-sinks-on-sale/medium-rounded-front-farmhouse-sink-two-tone-scroll We have selected canonical links for each domain but I need to know if this practice is having a negative impact on my SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArtisanCrafted0 -
Measure impact from new meta descriptions
Hi guys, I'm looking to implement new meta descriptions across a site and i want to measure the impact. So far I'm thinking of extracting the CTR data from GWT for the last 90 days to get the most accurate CTR averages for each URL. Then once the new meta descriptions have been implemented, compare the CTR with the old CTR averages accross URLs. Do you think this would be the most accurate way of measuring the impact? Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright1 -
Duplicate Titles caused by blog
Hey I've done some research and understand the canonical tags and rel prev and rel next, but I wanted to get someones opinion on if we needed it since the articles are somewhat independent of each in content (there's a focus on both banks and accountants) We have over 68 pages of blog materials http://www.sageworks.com/blog/default.aspx?page=7 through http://www.sageworks.com/blog/default.aspx?page=68 Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh1230 -
Removed Duplicate Domains, What Should I Expect?
Hi All, So I have been at my current company for 5 months now. I quickly realized that they previously bought multiple domains. The domains do make sense (they are mostly our products, etc). However they did not just redirect to our main website, instead, they were a direct copy of our main website. They had it setup so that when we made changes to our main website, www.mainwebsite.com, that the same exact change went to www.productwebsite.com. Basically we had about 7 of the SAME EXACT websites with a different root domain. So I explained to them the problem with having duplicate content on the web and how we are basically just self cannibalizing our online efforts. This problem is fixed now and I am just wondering if anybody has seen the results before? To tell you the truth we already do pretty well SEO-wise. Just wondering if this will make it even better? I am assuming that this will also take a little while to take effect? Thanks! Pat
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PatBausemer0 -
Should we block urls like this - domainname/shop/leather-chairs.html?brand=244&cat=16&dir=ascℴ=price&price=1 within the robots.txt?
I've recently added a campaign within the SEOmoz interface and received an alarming number of errors ~9,000 on our eCommerce website. This site was built in Magento, and we are using search friendly url's however most of our errors were duplicate content / titles due to url's like: domainname/shop/leather-chairs.html?brand=244&cat=16&dir=asc&order=price&price=1 and domainname/shop/leather-chairs.html?brand=244&cat=16&dir=asc&order=price&price=4. Is this hurting us in the search engines? Is rogerbot too good? What can we do to cut off bots after the ".html?" ? Any help would be much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280