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
-
AMP - The what, why and how of it
Hi There, In our company, we never had AMP implemented on sites that we SEO for. We want to start doing that now. I know the basics of AMP and their requirements, however, I need to know a lot more about it from an SEO perspective of this before I actually get developers onto it. I want to know all the 1) risks involved, 2) the best ways to implement it (plugin etc.), 3) why it is worth it. I also want to know how to see if a developer knows what he is talking about - and really will do it the right way without messing me up? Are there any specific questions I should ask, or information he should be aware of? Also, is there a way for it it be done for pages that have more than just text like quote forms, sliding headers etc.? Should we only do it for the blog section of our site? I would greatly appreciate any links to additional resources on this topic, (not why to use AMP, but everything else) I greatly appreciate you taking the time to answer my question
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ruchy0 -
Faceted Navigation & SEO
Hi Is my faceted navigation bad for SEO?! example: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/metal-cabinets-cupboards Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Linking from & to in domains and sub-domains
What's the best optimised linking between sub-domains and domains? And every time we'll give website link at top with logo...do we need to link sub-domain also with all it's pages? If example.com is domain and example.com/blog is sub-domain or sub-folder... Do we need to link to example.com from /blog? Do we need to give /blog link in all pages of /blog? Is there any difference in connecting domains with sub-domains and sub-folders?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Meta refresh bad for SEO
Hi there, Some external developers have created a wishlist for a website that allows visitors to add products to a wishlist and then send an enquiry. Very similar set-up to a shopping basket really (without the payment option). However, this wishlist lives in a separate iframe and refreshes every 30 seconds to reflect any items visitors add to their wishlist. This refreshing is done with a meta refresh. I'm aware of the obvious usability issue that the visitor's product only appears after 30 seconds in their wishlist. However, are there also any SEO issues due to the refreshing of the iframe every 30 seconds? Please let me know, whether small or large issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robbern0 -
Duplicate Meta Descriptions in Press Releases
We have a client that does multiple press releases a year. One issue we noticed is that every press release has the same meta description tag and the duplicates are starting to really add up. Unfortunately the client does not want to create specialized meta descriptions for new press releases due to legal restrictions (every new meta description must be reviewed). What should we do about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Duplicate Errors from Wordpress login redirects
I've some Duplicate issues showing up in Moz Analytics which are due to a Q&A plugin being used on a Wordpress website which prompts the user to login. There's a number of links looking like the one shown below, which lead to the login page: www.website.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.website.com%question%2.... What's the best way to deal with this? -- extra info: this is only showing up in Moz Analytics. Google Webmaster Tools reports no duplicates.. I'm guessing this is maybe down to the 'redirect_to' parameter being effective in grouping the URLs for Googlebot. currently the wplogin and consequent redirects are 'noindex, follow' - I cannot see where this is being generated from in wp-login.php to change this to nofollow (if this will solve it).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregDixson0 -
How to Best Establish Ownership when Content is Duplicated?
A client (Website A) has allowed one of their franchisees to use some of the content from their site on the franchisee site (Website B). This franchisee lifted the content word for word, so - my question is how to best establish that Website A is the original author? Since there is a business relationship between the two sites, I'm thinking of requiring Website B to add a rel=canonical tag to each page using the duplicated content and referencing the original URL on site A. Will that work, or is there a better solution? This content is primarily informational product content (not blog posts or articles), so I'm thinking rel=author may not be appropriate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Allie_Williams0 -
How to remove hundreds of duplicate pages
Hi - while i was checking duplicate links, am finding hundreds of duplicates pages :- having undefined after domain name and before sub page url having /%5C%22/ after domain name and before the sub page url Due to Pagination limits Its a joomla site - http://www.mycarhelpline.com Any suggestions - shall we use:- 301 redirect leave these as standdstill and what to do of pagination pages (shall we create a separate title tag n meta description of every pagination page as unique one) thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0