High number of Duplicate Page titles and Content related to index.php
-
It appears that every page on our site (www.bridgewinners.com) also creates a version of itself with a suffix.
This results in Seomoz indicating that there are thousands of duplicate titles and content.
1. Does this matter? If so, how much?
2. How do I eliminate this (we are using joomla)?
Thanks.
-
Thank you Ryan and Ogy. Those answers are much appreciated.
-
Good luck & enjoy Joomla
-
Thanks for the tip Ognjen. I am just learning Joomla. I love it so far but it will take months for me to begin to have any level of comfort with the software.
-
True, however native friendly url handling in Joomla has serious limitations when it comes to url and metadata handling.
Looking at www.bridgewinners.com, he already has friendly URLs. If using sh404SEF, Jason should ensure to enable .htaccess flie to lose /index.php/ in URLs.
-
In Joomla 1.6 login as an administrator then look at Site > Global Configuration > Site Settings. On the right side you will see SEO Settings. The 2nd option is Use URL rewriting. If you are on an Apache web server using a htaccess file (the most common web configuration) then check the YES box and it will remove the index.php from your URLs.
This change does not require any plugin to work. I have a new, clean install and it works for me.
-
Jason:
-
As Ryan recommended, use an SEF plugin for Joomla. We use sh404SEF since 2007 on all our sites. That will prevent many duplicate pages caused by different item ids and other url parameters.
-
if you use friendly URL plugin, then you should be able to block all Joomla URLs starting with index.php and index2.php via robots.txt file. Check this website as an example of Joomla site with additional URLs blocked using robots.txt file: http://www.bulletinbag.com/robots.txt
-
Finally, use a properly configured sitemap extension for Joomla and submit it to search engines. This will tell search engines which pages to consider first if it finds duplicated pages. We recommend using XMAP Joomla extension.
Best,
Ogy
-
-
Hi Jason.
Yes, it matters. I can see there is a site linking to www.bridgewinners.com/index.php. That link should be to www.bridgewinners.com/. Since the link is for the wrong page, your home page is not receiving the juice from that link.
How much it matters depends on how many links you have to pages on your site that include index.php in the URL, the anchor text used in those links, the ranking of the linking domain and page, along with how important your search engine ranking is for your site. If you are at SEOmoz, it seems that it matters enough and should be fixed.
I am just learning Joomla now. There should either be an option to use "friendly URLs" or a plugin which provides that feature.
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 Content on a Page Due to Responsive Version
What are the implications if a web designer codes the content of the site twice into the page in order to make the site responsive? I can't add the url I'm afraid but the H1 and the content appear twice in the code in order to produce both a responsive version and a desktop version. This is a Wordpress site. Is Google clever enough to distinguish between the 2 versions and treat them individually? Or will Google really think that the content has been repeated on the same page?
Technical SEO | | Wagada0 -
My client is using a mobile template for their local pages and the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions
So my client has 2000+ different store locations. Each location has the standard desktop location and my client opted for a corresponding mobile template for each location. Now the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions. However this is only because the mobile template and desktop store pages are using the exact same title/meta description tag. Is Google penalizing my client for this? Would it be worth it to update the mobile template title/meta description tags?
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Duplicate Content
SEOmoz is reporting duplicate content for 2000 of my pages. For example, these are reported as duplicate content: http://curatorseye.com/Name=“Holster-Atlas”---Used-by-British-Officers-in-the-Revolution&Item=4158
Technical SEO | | jplill
http://curatorseye.com/Name=âHolster-Atlasâ---Used-by-British-Officers-in-the-Revolution&Item=4158 The actual link on the site is http://www.curatorseye.com/Name=“Holster-Atlas”---Used-by-British-Officers-in-the-Revolution&Item=4158 Any insight on how to fix this? I'm not sure where the second version of the URL is coming from. Thanks,
Janet0 -
Duplicate content vs. less content
Hi, I run a site that is currently doing very well in google for the terms that we want. We are 1,2 or 3 for our 4 targeted terms, but havent been able to jump to number one in two categories that I would really like to. In looking at our site, I didn't realize we have a TON of duplicate content as seen by SEO moz and I guess google. It appears to be coming from our forum, we use drupal. RIght now we have over 4500 pages of duplicate content. Here is my question: How much is this hurting us as we are ranking high. Is it better to kill the forum (which is more community service than business) and have a very tight site SEO-wise, or leave the forum even with the duplicate content. Thanks for your help. Erik
Technical SEO | | SurfingNosara0 -
Duplicate Content Vs No Content
Hello! A question that has been throw around a lot at our company has been "Is duplicate content better than no content?". We operate a range of online flash game sites, most of which pull their games from a feed, which includes the game description. We have unique content written on the home page of the website, but aside from that, the game descriptions are the only text content on the website. We have been hit by both Panda and Penguin, and are in the process of trying to recover from both. In this effort we are trying to decide whether to remove or keep the game descriptions. I figured the best way to settle the issue would be to ask here. I understand the best solution would be to replace the descriptions with unique content, however, that is a massive task when you've got thousands of games. So if you have to choose between duplicate or no content, which is better for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ryan_Phillips0 -
Once duplicate content found, worth changing page or forget it?
Hi, the SEOmoz crawler has found over 1000 duplicate pages on my site. The majority are based on location and unfortunately I didn't have time to add much location based info. My question is, if Google has already discovered these, determined they are duplicate, and chosen the main ones to show on the SERPS, is it worth me updating all of them with localalized information so Google accepts the changes and maybe considers them different pages? Or do you think they'll always be considered duplicates now?
Technical SEO | | SpecialCase0 -
Sneaky Page Title?
Hi Mozzers, I am a newbie, for sure. But I have been able to figure out how to help my customer very well; with the help of SEOMOZ of course. Here is the question: My customer (ZR) has a competitor and they use the phrase ZR.com in the title of one of their high ranked pages. Please see the enclosed graphic for the complete story. I would love to know if it is even legal (a pro would know) please see enclosed JPG... Thanks a bunch! OJ0ZL.jpg
Technical SEO | | Giggy0