Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Duplicate content on subdomains.
-
Hi Mozer's,
I have a site www.xyz.com and also geo targeted sub domains www.uk.xyz.com, www.india.xyz.com and so on. All the sub domains have the content which is same as the content on the main domain that is www.xyz.com.
So, I want to know how can i avoid content duplication.
Many Thanks!
-
It would probably be better (and more likely to get you responses) if you started a new question - this one is three years old. Generally, I think it depends on your scope. If you need some kind of separation (corporate, legal, technical), then separate domains or sub-domains may make sense. They're also easier to target, in some ways. However, you're right that authority may be diluted and you'll need more marketing effort against each one.
If resources are limited and you don't need each country to be a fully separate entity, then you'll probably have less headaches with sub-folders. I'm speaking in broad generalities, though - this is a big decision that depends a lot on the details.
-
Dear all,
I have bought 30 geo top level domains. This is for an ecommerce project that has not launcehd yet (and isn't indexed by Google).
I am now at a point where I can change/consolidate all domains as sub domains or sub folders or keep things as they are.
I just worry that link building would be scattered and not focused and that it might be better to concentrate the efforts on one domain.
What are your views on this?
Many thanks.
-
Yeah - I'm really afraid that stacking all those sub-domains is going to cause you long-term issues with your link-building, and that some of those sub-domains could fragment. If the country needs to be in a sub-domain, then I think the hybrid approach (with "/shop" as a sub-folder) may cause you less trouble.
I will warn, though, that any change like this carries some risk. You'll have to put proper 301-redirects in place.
I might try the href lang tags first, though, and see if it helps the current problem (it may take a few weeks). Changing too many aspects of the on-page SEO at once could cause you a lot of grief.
-
shop. pages are simply new pages which are added for products to be sold with ease. I think that i might move shop.uk.xyz.com pages to uk.xyz.com/shop/product as in a sub folder. Do you think this will help in passing on the link juice to those pages after the change and would be easy for me to include them in the sitemap as well??
-
If you have separate GWT profiles, then I think the XML sitemap may have to be under the sub-domain - Google has to be able to access it from a sub-domain URL. It doesn't have to be in the root of the sub-domain.
I'm not clear on what the "shop." pages are, but stacking sub-domains like that sounds like it's getting pretty messy. Why the separation?
-
I have already created separate profiles for the subdomains, but my only worry is where to place the sitemap on the server eg in the root directory of the root domain or in the root directory of the sub domain.
Coming to the (2) the pages which i want to include in the site map are my product pages. so want to know if shop.uk.xyz.com can be included in the sitemap which will be for uk.xyz.com and also if does that count as a internal page of uk.xyz.com
-
It is probably best to create separate profiles in Google Webmaster Tools, because then you can target the sub-domains to the countries in question. At that point, you could also set up separate sitemaps. It'll give you a cleaner view of how each sub-domain is indexed and ranking.
I'm not sure I understand (2) - why wouldn't you include those pages in the sitemap?
-
Thank you for your inputs. I has relly helped me understand the situation.
I will try to implement this and let you know how I have done on this. Also I had few more things on this:
1. do i require a separate sitemap and robots file for all the sub domains and where shall i place it on the server?
2. in the sub domain there are pages like shop.uk.xyz.com/product1. so can i include that in the sitemaps as those are the pages which i really want to rank for.
-
There's no perfect answer. Canonical tags would keep the sub-domains from ranking, in many cases. The cross-TLD stuff is weird, though - Google can, in some cases, ignore the canonical if they think that one sub-domain is more appropriate for the country/ccTLD the searcher is using.
Sub-domains can be tricky in and of themselves, unfortunately, because they sometimes fragment and don't pass link "juice" fully to the root domain. I generally still think sub-folders are better for cases like this, but obviously that would be a big change (and potentially risky).
You could try the rel="alternate" hreflang tags. They're similar to canonical (a bit weaker), but basically are designed to handle the same content in different languages and regions:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
They're basically designed for exactly this problem. You can set the root domain to "en-US", the UK sub-domain to "en-UK", etc. I've heard generally good things, and they're low-risk, but you have to try it and see. They can be a little tricky to implement properly.
-
No, 301 and canonicals are completely different
A 301 will redirect a page and a canonical is setting the preferred version of the page. For example:
301 - you have an old version of the page that looks like this www.example.com/p?=153 and you want it to look like www.example.com/red-apples. You would use a 301 from the old page (www.example.com/p?=153) to the new page (www.example.com/red-apples)
Canonical - Lets go back to the red apples example. Lets say you have a ecommerce site and you have different ways to search for products. One way is to search by fruit and the other by color. So what you'll have is two versions of the end result. For example. You'll have www.example.com/fruit/red-apples and you might have www.example.com/red/red-apples. Since both of those pages show the same information you don't want the engines to think its duplicate content so you can add a rel=canonical link element to both pages to the preferred version of the two. (ie you might want to have the canonical be www.example.com/red-apples) That's all it does. It tells the engines your preferred version of the pages that may be the same.
Back to your original post, you really don't need to "noindex" but I thought you were having a duplicate content issue and that would solve the issue. (Generally, Google won't penalize you this sort of duplicate content)
Here is what I would do.
If you don't have Google Webmaster tools already set up then do so. Verify each version of your subdomain, (ie. india.xyz.com, uk.xyz.com, etc)(let me know if you need help) and then set your Geo Target for each them manually (You'll have to set this up manually because you have a gTLD and not a ccTLD)
How to set your Geo Target manually.
To to a particular version of your site in WMT (ie. india.xyz.com) and click on "configuration" then "settings". Under "settings" the first sections says "Geographical Target". "Check" the box and then use the drop down to select "india".
Repeat this for all of your subdomains for each specific country.
This will let Google know that you are trying to target users in a specific country.
If you have the money to invest in it, I would also try to have those subdomains hosted by a server in each particular country. (strong signal for Google)
Hope it helps.
-
Thanx Darin!
I have few doubts on this:
1. is rel canonical like a 301 redirect? As my concern is if my user goes to www.uk.xyz.com/productx , will he be redirected to to www.xyz.com/product
2. my sub domain pages are ranking in the country specific search engine. For ex, www.uk.xyz.com is ranking for keywords in google.co.uk. So if i noindex then i will loose my search engine presence in the country specific search engine.
PS the content on the pages is all same apart from the product currency.
-
I disagree. I said "noindex" not "nofollow". Link juice will be passed but not show up in the Serps. I do agree with you though that the strategy as a whole, if there is in-fact exact/duplicate content, seems to be a waste. Unless these pages are in another language, I don't see the point of this subdomain strategy.
-
Canonical will help to remove duplicate issues and also to consolidate your link values. I didn't see any issue with cross domain implementation.
If you add "noindex" to any of these pages, you won't get any link credit.
-
Short Answer: Set a canonical url on the pages to the root domain version and noindex the subdomain pages.
What this does is avoid the duplicate content problem. Generally, those subdomain pages won't rank anyway because the same information is on the "main" site. You can still build links to those subdomain pages and do a strong internal link structure to help the "main" site rankings.
The only negative to this is that the pages in your subdomain won't rank. That's not necessarily a bad thing but just know they won't. But, if the pages are truly duplicate content, they won't rank anyway.
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
-
How can I avoid duplicate content for a new landing page which is the same as an old one?
Hello mozers! I have a question about duplicate content for you... One on my clients pages have been dropping in search volume for a while now, and I've discovered it's because the search term isn't as popular as it used to be. So... we need to create a new landing page using a more popular search term. The page which is losing traffic is based on the search query "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory" this only gets 0-10 searches per month according to the keyword explorer tool. However, if we changed this to "replacing conservatory roof with solid roof" this gets up to 500 searches per month. Muuuuch better! The issue is, I don't want to close down and re-direct the old page because it's got a featured snippet and sits in position 1. So I'd like to create another page instead... however, as the two are effectively the same content, I would then land myself in a duplicate content issue. If I were to put a rel="canonical" tag in the original "can I put a solid roof...." page but say the master page is now the new one, would that get around the issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz0 -
Upper and lower case URLS coming up as duplicate content
Hey guys and gals, I'm having a frustrating time with an issue. Our site has around 10 pages that are coming up as duplicate content/ duplicate title. I'm not sure what I can do to fix this. I was going to attempt to 301 direct the upper case to lower but I'm worried how this will affect our SEO. can anyone offer some insight on what I should be doing? Update: What I'm trying to figure out is what I should do for our URL's. For example, when I run an audit I'm getting two different pages: aaa.com/BusinessAgreement.com and also aaa.com/businessagreement.com. We don't have two pages but for some reason, Google thinks we do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidmac1 -
Duplicate content due to parked domains
I have a main ecommerce website with unique content and decent back links. I had few domains parked on the main website as well specific product pages. These domains had some type in traffic. Some where exact product names. So main main website www.maindomain.com had domain1.com , domain2.com parked on it. Also had domian3.com parked on www.maindomain.com/product1. This caused lot of duplicate content issues. 12 months back, all the parked domains were changed to 301 redirects. I also added all the domains to google webmaster tools. Then removed main directory from google index. Now realize few of the additional domains are indexed and causing duplicate content. My question is what other steps can I take to avoid the duplicate content for my my website 1. Provide change of address in Google search console. Is there any downside in providing change of address pointing to a website? Also domains pointing to a specific url , cannot provide change of address 2. Provide a remove page from google index request in Google search console. It is temporary and last 6 months. Even if the pages are removed from Google index, would google still see them duplicates? 3. Ask google to fetch each url under other domains and submit to google index. This would hopefully remove the urls under domain1.com and doamin2.com eventually due to 301 redirects. 4. Add canonical urls for all pages in the main site. so google will eventually remove content from doman1 and domain2.com due to canonical links. This wil take time for google to update their index 5. Point these domains elsewhere to remove duplicate contents eventually. But it will take time for google to update their index with new non duplicate content. Which of these options are best best to my issue and which ones are potentially dangerous? I would rather not to point these domains elsewhere. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ajiabs0 -
Duplicate Content through 'Gclid'
Hello, We've had the known problem of duplicate content through the gclid parameter caused by Google Adwords. As per Google's recommendation - we added the canonical tag to every page on our site so when the bot came to each page they would go 'Ah-ha, this is the original page'. We also added the paramter to the URL parameters in Google Wemaster Tools. However, now it seems as though a canonical is automatically been given to these newly created gclid pages; below https://www.google.com.au/search?espv=2&q=site%3Awww.mypetwarehouse.com.au+inurl%3Agclid&oq=site%3A&gs_l=serp.3.0.35i39l2j0i67l4j0i10j0i67j0j0i131.58677.61871.0.63823.11.8.3.0.0.0.208.930.0j3j2.5.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..8.3.419.nUJod6dYZmI Therefore these new pages are now being indexed, causing duplicate content. Does anyone have any idea about what to do in this situation? Thanks, Stephen.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyPetWarehouse0 -
PDF for link building - avoiding duplicate content
Hello, We've got an article that we're turning into a PDF. Both the article and the PDF will be on our site. This PDF is a good, thorough piece of content on how to choose a product. We're going to strip out all of the links to our in the article and create this PDF so that it will be good for people to reference and even print. Then we're going to do link building through outreach since people will find the article and PDF useful. My question is, how do I use rel="canonical" to make sure that the article and PDF aren't duplicate content? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
News sites & Duplicate content
Hi SEOMoz I would like to know, in your opinion and according to 'industry' best practice, how do you get around duplicate content on a news site if all news sites buy their "news" from a central place in the world? Let me give you some more insight to what I am talking about. My client has a website that is purely focuses on news. Local news in one of the African Countries to be specific. Now, what we noticed the past few months is that the site is not ranking to it's full potential. We investigated, checked our keyword research, our site structure, interlinking, site speed, code to html ratio you name it we checked it. What we did pic up when looking at duplicate content is that the site is flagged by Google as duplicated, BUT so is most of the news sites because they all get their content from the same place. News get sold by big companies in the US (no I'm not from the US so cant say specifically where it is from) and they usually have disclaimers with these content pieces that you can't change the headline and story significantly, so we do have quite a few journalists that rewrites the news stories, they try and keep it as close to the original as possible but they still change it to fit our targeted audience - where my second point comes in. Even though the content has been duplicated, our site is more relevant to what our users are searching for than the bigger news related websites in the world because we do hyper local everything. news, jobs, property etc. All we need to do is get off this duplicate content issue, in general we rewrite the content completely to be unique if a site has duplication problems, but on a media site, im a little bit lost. Because I haven't had something like this before. Would like to hear some thoughts on this. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 360eight-SEO
Chris Captivate0 -
Duplicate Content on Wordpress b/c of Pagination
On my recent crawl, there were a great many duplicate content penalties. The site is http://dailyfantasybaseball.org. The issue is: There's only one post per page. Therefore, because of wordpress's (or genesis's) pagination, a page gets created for every post, thereby leaving basically every piece of content i write as a duplicate. I feel like the engines should be smart enough to figure out what's going on, but if not, I will get hammered. What should I do moving forward? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Byron_W0 -
Capitals in url creates duplicate content?
Hey Guys, I had a quick look around however I couldn't find a specific answer to this. Currently, the SEOmoz tools come back and show a heap of duplicate content on my site. And there's a fair bit of it. However, a heap of those errors are relating to random capitals in the urls. for example. "www.website.com.au/Home/information/Stuff" is being treated as duplicate content of "www.website.com.au/home/information/stuff" (Note the difference in capitals). Anyone have any recommendations as to how to fix this server side(keeping in mind it's not practical or possible to fix all of these links) or to tell Google to ignore the capitalisation? Any help is greatly appreciated. LM.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarlS0