Best advice for Duplicate URLs Being Indexed by Google

[Guest]

I am working on this website www.budsgunshop.com and I am seeing a notice from google webmaster tools that there are 50,000+ duplicate pages being indexed. Here are some examples :site:budsgunshop.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/1722_1723/products_id/93273 

http://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/21_24/products_id/93273

www.budsgunshop.com%2Fcatalog%2Fproduct_info.php%2FcPath%2F1722_1723%2Fproducts_id%2F93273%2FSpringfield%2BXDS%2B45%2B4%2522%2BBlack&ei=hcivVafMKYz3-AHK1oO4Bg&usg=AFQjCNG0ePDr4ruTDg7QyiKoIvR7MAa6_Q&sig2=oH6ykIoZKvmlMnSwAwfeYw&bvm=bv.98197061,d.cWw

http://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/1722_1723/products_id/93273/Springfield+XDS+45+4%22+Black?sort=date

http://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/1722_1723/products_id/93273/Springfield+XDS+45+4%22+Black?sort=low

http://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/1722_1723/products_id/93273/Springfield+XDS94045B+XD-S+5%2B17%2B1+45ACP+4%22

http://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/1722_1723/products_id/93273/Springfield+XDS94045B+XD-S+5%2B17%2B1+45ACP+4%22?sort=date

http://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/21/products_id/93273/Handguns/Springfield%20XDS94045B%20XD-S%205+1/6+1%2045ACP%204/quot/

 

To me it seems like one of these addons would work:

 

Sam's Remove and Prevent Duplicate Content
http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/7163

 

Google Duplicate content manager

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/6214

 

This topic and these addons seem to be discussed more around 2009-20010 so I thought I would ask what the current thoughts are on this type of issue. Would it still be a best practice to use one of them? 

[Jack_mcs]

It seems very unlikely that they are reporting that many duplicate pages, or any at all really. They may be reporting duplicate titles or meta tags, which is something else entirely. Also, the url's are very poorly formed and should not be used as they are, but that is a different subject too. It looks like there are different paths to the same product, which isn't a problem, though it may be what you are seeing reported. But some people prefer there to be only one so, in that case, you need to apply a canonical meta tag to point that out to the search engines. I'm not familiar with either of the addons you mentioned but I know there is at least canonical addon that creates incorrect tags so you need to be careful. You can try one of those and see how they work. Instead, you may want to install Header Tags SEO. which creates correct canonical tags and also has an option to create one common location for such urls.

[Hotclutch]

There's no osCommerce canonical tag addon that creates perfect canonical tags, simply because every site is different and will have unique setup requirements. Installing add-ons won't help you if you don't understand the goals you are trying to achieve with them in the first place. In the case of canonical tags you can do more harm than good by implementing them wrong.

[Guest]

It seems very unlikely that they are reporting that many duplicate pages, or any at all really. They may be reporting duplicate titles or meta tags, which is something else entirely. Also, the url's are very poorly formed and should not be used as they are, but that is a different subject too. It looks like there are different paths to the same product, which isn't a problem, though it may be what you are seeing reported. But some people prefer there to be only one so, in that case, you need to apply a canonical meta tag to point that out to the search engines. I'm not familiar with either of the addons you mentioned but I know there is at least canonical addon that creates incorrect tags so you need to be careful. You can try one of those and see how they work. Instead, you may want to install Header Tags SEO. which creates correct canonical tags and also has an option to create one common location for such urls.

 

Right they are reporting duplicate title tags, but basically the duplicate title tags are duplicate pages indexed in google. 

 

There's no osCommerce canonical tag addon that creates perfect canonical tags, simply because every site is different and will have unique setup requirements. Installing add-ons won't help you if you don't understand the goals you are trying to achieve with them in the first place. In the case of canonical tags you can do more harm than good by implementing them wrong.

Yeah, that is what I am afraid of. 

 

The basic goal is to have one version of each page indexed. Typically I would handle this with mod rewrites but I am not familiar with oscommerce so I thought I would see if this is a common issue that could be fixed with an addon or update. 

[Hotclutch]

You have to analyze each of your parameters and decide if it changes the content of the page. eg. osCsid is a parameter that does not change the content and it generates duplicate content and possible ranking spread if crawled by search engine bots. A parameter like that you can exclude with the canonical tag or set to ignore in Webmaster tools. 

 

You may think that parameters like page and sort generate duplicate content, but in most instances they don't, and if you exclude them then you starve the links on those pages of link juice. Of the Addons mentioned above Spooks' one is the best IMO because it gives the store owner the most configurable options, but it's not perfect.

[Jack_mcs]

Right they are reporting duplicate title tags, but basically the duplicate title tags are duplicate pages indexed in google. 

 

Yeah, that is what I am afraid of. 

 

The basic goal is to have one version of each page indexed. Typically I would handle this with mod rewrites but I am not familiar with oscommerce so I thought I would see if this is a common issue that could be fixed with an addon or update. 

No, the basic goal is to get as many pages listed as possible. It is perfectly fine to have duplicate titles for different pages. But in your example, you are seeing duplicate titles for the same page, just different paths, which is also fine. If the keywords for the pages are different, then the title and tags should be different. Google isn't saying, "You've got a serious problem that needs to be fixed." They are saying, 'Oh by the way, some of your products have the same title. Are you sure that is what you mean to do?" Sometimes the answer is yes.

 

The purpose of the canonical tag is to tell the search engines which url takes precedence.  If you have two urls like http://domain/category1/product_a and http://domain/category2/product_a and they both point to the same product, the search engines will list them both, and that is good. But what happens when someone searches for the keyword of that product? Which url  is returned and in what order if both are returned? The search engines use the canonical tag to decide that.  If one isn't present, they choose for you.

 

You don't need to worry about the canonical tag as long as whatever script creating it is doing it correctly. I mentioned Header Tags SEO because I know that it does do that. But one of the other addons may also. Use whichever one makes sense for your site. If it has some way in admin to control the tags, then it is not coded well and I would skip it. But whichever you choose, you do need one.

[Guest]

ok thanks for the advice.