Duplicate Errors from Wordpress login redirects

[GregDixson]

I've some Duplicate issues showing up in Moz Analytics which are due to a Q&A plugin being used on a Wordpress website which prompts the user to login. There's a number of links looking like the one shown below, which lead to the login page:

www.website.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.website.com%question%2....

What's the best way to deal with this?

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extra info:

• this is only showing up in Moz Analytics. Google Webmaster Tools reports no duplicates.. I'm guessing this is maybe down to the 'redirect_to' parameter being effective in grouping the URLs for Googlebot.

• currently the wplogin and consequent redirects are 'noindex, follow' - I cannot see where this is being generated from in wp-login.php to change this to nofollow (if this will solve it).

[seoar]

Always for Login and Logout pages use ( NOINDEX - NOFOLLOW ) so you will not face problems like this again.

[evolvingSEO]

Greg

Generally if you're not seeing this in Webmaster Tools or Screaming Frog (have you tried a crawl there yet?) then it's probably not an issue. Crawl it with Screaming Frog, and if you maintain the default settings (honor robots.txt and don't follow nofollows) and set to Googlebot, this will be a pretty accurate representation of what Google is doing. If the pages don't pop up, you should be fine.

Also, check webmaster tools for "crawl stats" - on average, is Google crawling an abnormal amount of pages compared to the "normal" site size?

If it is a problem, you can always block them with robots.txt

-Dan

[GregDixson]

Thanks Dan, that's really helpful...

Webmaster Tools reports no crawl issues or anything strange and the crawled pages matches the site size. I've performed a Screaming Frog crawl with the suggested settings, and it IS seeing those redirected pages - 48 in total - which matches the number Moz Analytics is reporting.

The actual page these redirected URL's end up at is a CATCHA page - This is an unneeded layer of 'extra' security put in place by the hosting company after the spate of Wordpress hacks last year. (Cookie'd users who have recently passed the CATCHA would arrive at the Wordpress login page) As such, we don't have any control over the code on that page or anything.

So I guess that even though WMT isn't complaining about these duplicates, to keep things clean and tidy then blocking with robots.txt is the solution huh.

[evolvingSEO]

Greg

That's right, the best way is to block crawling with robots.txt - makes sense to keep crawling clean and efficient. If you're using Yoast you can edit robots.txt right in there, or you can do via FTP.

[GregDixson]

Yea I'd already blocked some duplicates from a BuddyPress issue, so I didn't want to just jump in and block straight away without some further investigation. Good to know that's the best solution to keep things clean. Cheers for answering Dan.