Duplicate title tags being caused by upper case and lower case version of urls'
-
Hi
GWT is reporting lots of duplicate titles for a clients new site.
Mainly these are due to 2x different versions of the url, one with words starting with an upper case character and the other all lower case.
Clients dev saying this has something to do with windows server and is ok!
Is this correct or should i be telling them to delete and then 301 redirect all upper case versions to the lower case (since lower case better practice) and that will deal with the reported dupe titles ?
All Best
Dan
-
Hi Tom
Sorry to be a pain but please can you confirm re my latest question/comment reply to yours, i.e. does your advice still stand if client on a windows server (since i dont think have .htaccess files or do/can they?)
And if not then is there a similar course of action that can be taken ?
Cheers
Dan
-
Many Thanks Raymond !
All Best
Dan
-
That great Tom thanks alot for your advice !
Clients on a windows server, am i right in thinking they dont have htaccess files since they are just on apache ?
If so is principle/code the same and just done in a different file ? if so any ideas what that file is ? or am i mistaken and windows do have htaccess files ?
Cheers
Dan
-
Hi Dan
I wouldn't want to leave anything to doubt and would prefer to have 1 version of each URL available.
Fortunately, a fairly simple solution can be put in place in your htaccess file. As always, please backup and test before trying any implementation - I can't tell you how many times I've made a simple mistake in the htaccess file that causes big problems!
Anyway, the code you'd want to enter at the top of the file is:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteMap lc int:tolower
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [A-Z]
RewriteRule (.*) ${lc:$1} [R=301,L]That code will basically rewrite any URL containing uppercase letters to the same URL using only lowercase.
Redirects are quicker and more reliable than canonical tags in my experience and this doesn't take long to get implemented, so best not leave anything to chance.
Hope this helps.
-
GWT sometimes takes a while to register the change. It just actually happened on one of my clients pages where there was a bug in the code made by the developer and they got 30,000 duplicate title and description errors. It was fixed about 2 months ago and while the errors have dropped to 2000 or so, it is still not at zero yet, so it does take some time depending on how often Google crawls the site.
If the developer says they did it, I would recommend the first thing you do is simply check that they did it. Go to one of the pages in question, both one with capital and without, and do a view source on both to check that the rel="canonical" tag is there and is correct. Programmers don't always know much about SEO so they may be implementing them wrong.
-
Thanks Raymond
The developers are saying they have done this
Does that mean that if its showing in GWT it hasnt been done ?
Cheers
Dan
-
As a simpler solution, why don't you just add a rel="canonical" tag to each page specifying the one you want? That should take care of any duplicate content issues.
I hope this helps.
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
-
Joomla creating duplicate pages, then the duplicate page's canonical points to itself - help!
Using Joomla, every time I create an article a subsequent duplicate page is create, such as: /latest-news/218-image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface and /component/content/article?id=218:image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface The latter being the duplicate. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, but the canonical tag on the duplicate is pointing to itself.. creating mayhem in Moz and Webmaster tools. We have hundreds of duplicates across our website and I'm very concerned with the impact this is having on our SEO! I've tried plugins such as sh404SEF and Styleware extensions, however to no avail. Can anyone help or know of any plugins to fix the canonicals?
Technical SEO | | JamesPearce0 -
Duplicate Title Tags On Blogs
Hello Mozzers, I have a client who has a blog and articles section on their website, due to the amount of content they have in these section they have multiples pages so it would be like.. www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p1 www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p2 www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p3 www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p4 All obvioulsy with seperate content in each blog/article posts but the meta descriptions on title tags for this p1,p2,p3,p4 and so on are all the same, is this a major issue? and if so how do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | Prestige-SEO0 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Content
I have a site that has a lot of contact modules. So basically each section/page has a contact person and when you click the contact button it brings up a new window with form to submit and then ends with a thank you page. All of the contact and thank you pages are showing up as duplicate page titles and content. Is this something that needs to be fixed even if I am not using them to target keywords?
Technical SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
What's the best way to solve this sites duplicate content issues?
Hi, The site is www.expressgolf.co.uk and is an e-commerce website with lots of categories and brands. I'm trying to achieve one single unique URL for each category / brand page to avoid duplicate content and to get the correct URL's indexed. Currently it looks like this... Main URL http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green Different Versions http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/ http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/1 http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/2 http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/3 http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/4 http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/all http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/1/ http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/2/ http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/3/ http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/4/ http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/all/ Firstly, what is the best course of action to make all versions point to the main URL and keep them from being indexed - Canonical Tag, NOINDEX or block them in robots? Secondly, do I just need to 301 the (/) from all URL's to the non (/) URL's ? I'm sure this question has been answered but I was having trouble coming to a solution for this one site. Cheers, Paul
Technical SEO | | paulmalin0 -
Title Tag Wordpress
I need to know how can I personalize the title tag individually in my categories?
Technical SEO | | nafera20 -
How do I eliminate duplicate page titles?
Almost...I repeat almost all of my duplicate page titles show up as such because the page is being seen twice in the crawl. How do I prevent this? <colgroup><col width="336"> <col width="438"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | ENSO
| www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html | Contact ENSO Plastics |
| ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html | Contact ENSO Plastics | This is what is from the CSV...there are many more just like this. How do I cut out all of these duplicate urls?0 -
Does Google follow a text based URL with no anchor tags?
I am seeing with Webmaster Tools that Google is trying to follow the text based truncated URL from SuperPages despite the fact that they are not in an anchor tag. The net result for Google is a 404 error as they try to access pages that do not exist. has anyone seen this issue before and any suggestions on how to prevent these errors? A Superpage listing: The first link works fine, but the text based link shown below is cut off and as a result Google gets to a 404 page. http://swbd-out.superpages.com/webresults.htm?qkw=dr+hylton+lightman&qcat=web&y=0&x=0& Dr. Hylton Lightman, MD - Pediatrician, Allergist, - Far Rockaway ... Dr. Hylton Lightman, MD, Far Rockaway, NY, Rated 4/4 By Patients. 26 Reviews, Patients' Choice Award Winner, Phone Number & Practice Locations www.vitals.com/doctors/Dr_Hylton_Lightma... [Found on Bing]
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
Crawl Tool Producing Random URL's
For some reason SEOmoz's crawl tool is returning duplicate content URL's that don't exist on my website. It is returning pages like "mydomain.com/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pricing" Nothing like that exists as a URL on my website. Has anyone experienced something similar to this, know what's causing it, or know how I can fix it?
Technical SEO | | MyNet0