Duplicate content issue

[Ideas-Money-Art]

Hi everyone,

I have an issue determining what type of duplicate content I have.

www.example.com/index.php?mact=Calendar,m57663,default,1&m57663return_id=116&m57663detailpage=&m57663year=2011&m57663month=6&m57663day=19&m57663display=list&m57663return_link=1&m57663detail=1&m57663lang=en_GB&m57663returnid=116&page=116

Since I am not an coding expert, to me it looks like it is a URL parameter duplicate content. Is it?

At the same time "return_id" would makes me think it is a session id duplicate content. I am confused about how to determine different types of duplicate content, even by reading articles on Seomoz about it: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content.

Could someone help me on how to recognize different types of duplicate content?

Thank you!

[CaseyKluver]

Hi Jeff,

index.php is the same as index.php?something=something&anotherthing=somethinglese

Each page should have a different url like index.php and page.php instead of always using index.php

[Kotkov]

You can determine if you have duplicate content several ways. search in google site:example.com and see how many pages google knows at your website. Also, when you are on page with this crazy url, open source code and see if a page has rel="canonical" tag. In your page that would be the best solution to signal robot that this is the same page as your index.php page.

Also, you can try Xenu. good and fast program to run your site on duplicates.

Hope it helps, you can show your website so we can take a look.

[Ideas-Money-Art]

Thank you for your answers but I guess I didn't formulate properly my question.

My 1st question was: What kind of duplicate content is it?

• session id
• or url parameter

My second question is: How do you differentiate them? What do you look at when a duplicate content is a session id one or a url parameter issue?

[JoeYoungblood]

Let me try.

1. The answer to your first question is that it only matters if you're trying to figure out how to handle it programmaticaly. In this case you might have to ask the developer if this is being done by a session id. To me it looks more like a URL parameter, but without a live example I wouldnt know, could you provide the website in question? If not try visiting the website once, clear your cache and then visit again and see if the number after "return_id" changes. if it changes that is a session id. If it stays the same have a friend visit the website in the same manor and see if the number stays the same, if it changes then there's a good chance that this is a session id.

No matter if it's a session id adding it or not "return_id" is technically a URL parameter that is triggered by a session id.

2. The second question is still a bit vague, so let me see if this is correct. are you asking how to treat the duplicate content once you know what is causing it? If so, then follow these rules.

If the content changes significantly in the presence of the session id or parameter then this is not duplicate content. If the content does change do the following:

• make sure to use rel canonical for the root URL. In your example that would be: www.example.com/index.php?mact=Calendar
• set the URL parameters in Google and Bings webmaster tools to treat the parameter correctly.
• When the parameter or session id is present add the noindex, follow robots tag. this will allow the bots to spider through and pass on link juice in the event that someone links to your parameter versions

I think you have a larger issue, which is that your website's code is using the index.php to generate all of the pages, in the example that is calendar. This is a common mistake that programmers make since they work to do things as quickly and efficiently as possible. Its far easier to keep all of the code in the one file than to create several different dynamic files that work with each other.

If you dont have the ability to break this down and generate out different pages you might be able to use URL Rewrites to make browsers and bots think the URLs are actually different.

[mediabase]

Hello Jeff, I would like to say first that lots of sites have duplicate content problems. For the most part, this is not a huge issue. When search engines find duplicate content they choose one of the pages to list in the index, and then will ignore the other. This assumes, of course, that the nature of the duplicate content is not so bad that it would lead to the search engine wanting to ban you. This can happen if a review of your situation causes them to believe that you are deliberately trying to rank multiple times for the same search terms.

Here is a link that fixes the problem of duplicate content :

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

[Ideas-Money-Art]

Thank you guys for being so helpful!!:)