Duplictate Pages for SAME listing
This topic contains 18 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by 
Paolo 10 years, 4 months ago.
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Open Support TicketTagged: google, Permalinks, SEO
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July 8, 2014 at 2:33 pm #7795
Hi there,
I assume this is a general issue, but I did not find anything using the forum search. It appears this plugin has a HUGE SEO shortcoming in its listing detail page structure:
/place/brazil/listingname/
/place/brazil/category-name/listingname/
/place/brazil/sao-paulo/listingname/
/place/brazil/sao-paulo/category-name/listingname/
/place/brazil/sao-paulo/sao-paulo/listingname/
/place/brazil/sao-paulo/sao-paulo/category-name/listingname/–> All these different URLs deliver the SAME listing detail page. This means we have a ton of duplicate content for every single listing.
Is there a way to fix this this? Correct behaviour would be to JUST have the listing URL under /place/brazil/sao-paulo/sao-paulo/category-name/listingname/
–> All others should be a 404
Thanks a lot,
SebastianJuly 8, 2014 at 2:41 pm #7797Hi,
Sorry but content are not same, plz have a look on breadcrumbs.
July 8, 2014 at 2:53 pm #7800?
What kind of explanation is that? The whole point is that I have the SAME listing which is accessible under different URLs and has different breadcrumbs. I want to have ONE site for “Frank’s New York Steak house” and not 6 which will all be for THAT listing. This makes 0.0 sense. If this is the way the plugin is built I am shocked nobody has pointed this out. This is SEO 101.
Your answer to me shows that it seems there is a great lack in what is considered being “duplicate content”. I suggest you have a great look at that: http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
What we are doing is giving out the SAME listing under different URLs ; different breadcrumbs make no difference at all, as the LISTING is the SAME. It make 0 sense to have different URLs and different breadcrumbs.
I heavily suggest you guys look into this, as this basically makes the entire plugin not SEO functional. The only fix you guys could add would be to add 301s pointing to “the” currect listing page ; or possibly add an automatic noindex to all those other duplicates.
Please update me on this…that really is a bummer
July 8, 2014 at 7:56 pm #7848Hi,
personally I think Google is a bit smarter than that.
1) if ever google was to find the other URL, the breadcrumb makes it clear that it’s the same page, assigned to different taxonomies.
2) google will only index the page that is actually linked somewhere in your website.
This is indexed (because there is a link in the website taking the bot over that page) :
http://wpgeo.directory/attractions/united-states/new-york/new-york/landmark/central-park/
These are not indexed (because there are no links in the website taking the bot over that pages) :
http://wpgeo.directory/attractions/united-states/new-york/landmark/central-park/
http://wpgeo.directory/attractions/united-states/landmark/central-park/
http://wpgeo.directory/attractions/landmark/central-park/
http://wpgeo.directory/attractions/central-park/
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:http:%2F%2Fwpgeo.directory%2Fattractions%2Fcentral-park%2F
In fact, if you create a sitemap.xml automatically with any tool (behaving like bots do), that page will come up only once…
Anyway, adding 301s wouldn’t be a bad idea just to avoid confusing users about potential issues of duplicate pages.
Thx
July 9, 2014 at 7:58 am #7880Hi Paolo,
thanks for your answer. I agree to most of that…at least to part 2 –> whereas crawlers get to all sorts of places so you never know…also as I do not have contral over incoming links a user may place somwhere. I will have my developer look into it and possibly come up with an automatic noindex/canonical or redirect function.
Thanks,
SebastianJuly 16, 2014 at 3:26 am #8590I agree with nyhotdogman. This is a critical issue for SEO. Current link structure will keep any geodirectory site low in google organic rankings. New algorithm gives very high priority to content quality. For Google those are different URLS with duplicated content. I have dealt with this on other websites and they were not able to rank in organic SEO until the URL issue was fixed (First page / competitive market). It’s understandable for the free package but in paid version should definitely be fixed. Is there any work on this ?
Other than that I’m very happy with the modular approach for your directory.
Thanks.
Julio
August 12, 2014 at 8:46 am #11723Hi Paolo,
I am not an SEO expert. I was just reading another thread and Guust suggested this one in his reply.
Can we safely rely on how GD is designed and confidently say we shouldn’t worry about search engine issues?
August 12, 2014 at 9:11 am #11725I was also referred to this page regarding duplicate content and the provided answers do not satisfy me at all.
The problem mentioned I have not even realized but the problem is a lot bigger than just this.
The solution for the details pages would be to place an automatic redirect or rel=canonical tag as stated before. This needs to be implemented because I dont trust that google will not find these links.
Additionally, I have found that the category texts appear on every category+city page:
http://screencast.com/t/hrYmFVLTdpS
http://screencast.com/t/IQPb7ZJE598These are two speparate URLs. Both show the same text. The same applies to all the different cities we set up.
Meaning that if you enter a category text and 200 cities, you will have the text 201 times on your site. AND these pages do get indexed. I even want them to be indexed as thats what I build the site for. I want to rank for “CATEGORY in CITY” organically. This only happens, though, if there is a different text on all of these pages.
So the best would be if we could set up an individual text for every “city + category” page. If that is not possible the text should only be shown on all cities + category.
August 12, 2014 at 9:34 am #11727@tpodlech, when you say text on each City+Category page, will something like a dynamic text somewhere on the body of the page that says “City_Name Category_Name” work?
For example, the page for Los Angeles, California Restaurants will have a dynamic text that will say “Find and Compare Los Angeles Restaurants Below.”
Or something like “Here’s a list of Restaurants in Los Angeles.”
Is this doable?
August 12, 2014 at 9:52 am #11728Yes, that would be a good solution that I would have my programmer implement on the site.
The implementation is actually quite easy as we would only need a text field. In this text field we would need to add tags such as %%category%% and %%city%%.
This solution is not perfekt as we would need to add 500 word+ texts to really rank for competitive keywords. But it is still better than nothing.
Another option would be that we can use spin text using the {|} format. But that would be a major implementation I would say.
August 12, 2014 at 9:52 am #11729@tpodlech, sorry I guess I was writing the same time as you were. Thank you for sharing this info.
What if in addition to texts, we also add the listing date with each listing on the page?
Can this be done with an SEO plugin like Yoast free or premium version?
August 12, 2014 at 10:03 am #11730I can ask a programmer regarding the spin text option if you can provide more details so I can tell him exactly what needs to be done. We can probably share the cost too. 🙂
August 12, 2014 at 10:23 am #11732What if in addition to texts, we also add the listing date with each listing on the page?
Compared to the text needed this is not enough. It might help but not a lot.
I can ask a programmer regarding the spin text option if you can provide more details
This might help as well: https://wordpress.org/plugins/text-spinner/
The problem with this is that it automatically spins the texts and does not check the uniqueness of every text. But this is important to ensure that each text really is different.
Therefore, putting the various texts into a database would be better
August 12, 2014 at 10:32 am #11733Thanks for sharing that text spinner plugin. The plugin author claims “a unique copy will be generated on each page load”. Do you think it’s worth trying?
August 12, 2014 at 1:59 pm #11762Thanks for sharing that text spinner plugin. The plugin author claims “a unique copy will be generated on each page load”. Do you think it’s worth trying?
On each page load means that the text on that specific page changes any time google visits it. And that is not good. Google should see the same text on that specific page.
Otherwise Google could find the same text on two different pages because the plugin does not know which text it is diplaying on other pages.
If you want try it out. It might work 🙂
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