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Whats with the backslash in the url adding as duplicate content?
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Is this a bug or something that needs to be addressed? If so, just use a redirect?
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In the Pro account, it shows it as an error, but when looking at the live version, it redirects like it should. Must have been a hiccup in the crawl
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Yeah you could either do a 301 redirect or just set the canonical tag in your page.
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Thank you. It never surfaced until this week. I'll throw a redirect. Thanks
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Whats with the backslash in the url adding as duplicate content?
A backslash is viewed as a character. You could choose to present different content on a URL with a backslash versus without one.
mysite.com/testing does not necessarily offer the same content as mysite.com/testing/. Just because you choose to offer the same content on both pages does not mean search engines will understand your choice by default. Each URL is unique and viewed separately.
Is this a bug or something that needs to be addressed? If so, just use a redirect?
If you used the SEOmoz crawler and it notified you of an issue with some pages on your site which are viewed as duplicate content due to the addition of a backlash, it is not a bug. This issue should be addressed. A 301 redirect would likely be the best solution.
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