Duplicate content issue - online retail site.

[McTaggart]

Hello Mozzers, just looked at a website and just about every product page (there are hundreds - yikes!) is duplicated like this at end of each url (see below). Surely this is a serious case of duplicate content? Any idea why a web developer would do this? Thanks in advance! Luke

prod=company-081
prod=company-081&cat=2

[CommT]

Hi Luke,

Use the canonical tag. Some info from Google here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en

Good luck!

Amelia

[EGOL]

Surely this is a serious case of duplicate content?

It is not too serious... because it can probably be fixed without a huge effort.

I have not done a thorough study of the problem but you might be able to solve it by changes to the CMS or with rel=canonical or with redirects.

Any idea why a web developer would do this?

   This is really common.    Lots of developers are developers and not SEOs.

IMO you have a much larger problem.   The pages of this website have almost zero content.  Almost guaranteed to perform poorly or be hit with a panda problem.

[CommercePundit]

Hi Luke,

These all are scraped pages according to Google Guideline - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721312?hl=en&ref_topic=2371375

There are 2 ways to resolve this issue.

1: You will have to remove these kind of pages.
2: If these all are your product pages then you should include generic information about your product and unique description or you can say very exact description about your product.

Above 2 things only is the solution for your question.

[McTaggart]

Thanks for useful feedback EGOL - yes I'm on to advising on content (or lack of!) next (gulp!).

[gazzerman1]

Very common.

There are a bunch of simple solutions.

First you can look at putting some php at the top of the page that looks to see if "cat" has a value. if so then put an if clause in the meta section. if cat not empty show meta noindex etc...

Another option is for you to go into webmaster tools and change the "URL Parameters" in the "Crawl" menu. Select the option that best fits.

I have had to do this for many sites and seen great results once sorted out.

You can also use the "Remove URLs" tool under the "Google Index" menu to remove large sections quickly if they all fall under a specific pattern or path.

[McTaggart]

Thanks CommercePundit - yes, this site needs a great deal of work, that's for sure.

[McTaggart]

Thanks Gary - good to know - much appreciated, Luke

[McTaggart]

Thanks Amelia

[AWCthreads]

Wait a minute...I'm interested in this.

How did you ninjas find the website?  Must've been posted prior to the answers and removed later.

Luke, would you mind pm'ing me with the pages?  I think I could benefit from a look at it.

[CommT]

Pleasure