Pagination & duplicate meta

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I have a few pages flagged for duplicate meta e.g.:

http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches

I can;t see anything wrong with the pagination & other pages have the same code, but aren't flagged for duplicate:

http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets

http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=2

I can't see to find the issue - any ideas?

Becky

[LoganRay]

Hi,

I can't explain why Moz throws a duplicate for one and not the other, that's odd. I did look at the source code for both of the paginated URLs you posted, and it looks like rel=prev/next is mostly right, but a couple suggestions:

1. Remove the self-referring canonical tags - On this URL (http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=2) you've got a canonical that points to itself, that's in conflict with the rel=prev/next tags. Rel=prev/next should be used in place of canonical tags, not in conjunction with.
2. The one exception to my point about canonicals above: on page=1 of your pagination, canonicalize that to the root. Example, http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=1 should canonicalize to http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets, since those are identical in actual displayed content.

[CleverPhD]

View source on both pages.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000746.htm

Or use the handy Moz bar to view the descriptions

Both your title and meta are exactly the same - aka they are duplicates

view-source:http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches
<title>Workbenches & Work Stations from Key</title>

view-source:http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2
<title>Workbenches & Work Stations from Key</title>

You can remedy this by simply adding "- Page #" at the end of your title and description, where # is whatever page in the pagination you are at.

The reason why the other pages in your pagination are not showing up with the duplicate issue is that you are hiding them from Google.

When I am on Page 2 and I click on the buttons for page 3,4,5 etc - here are the links that are shown

Page 3 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2#productBeginIndex:60&orderBy:5&pageView:list&

Page 4 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2#productBeginIndex:90&orderBy:5&pageView:list&

Page 5 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2#productBeginIndex:120&orderBy:5&pageView:list&

These are the links that people can click on to navigate at the bottom of the page.  Everything behind the hash is ignored by Google. It is a clever way to hide parameters, but when Google looks at this it is just seeing links to the exact same page. Likewise, on that page you have a canonical link to page 2, so even if Google could see the parameters you are giving it a directive that tells Google that Page 2 is the only page that exists.

I can see that you are using rel next prev to designate Page 3 as Page 3 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 etc, but you are not coding the rel next prev properly by putting it up in the header with the meta tags.

In summary

1. You have duplicate title and meta tags for all your paginated pages
2. You are not linking to your paginated pages properly within the user navigation
3. You are incorrectly using rel next prev

[ViviCa1]

This post is deleted!

[ViviCa1]

As far as I am aware, there is nothing wrong with using both canonicals and pagination on the same page. Google says this as well here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en

We have pagination and canonicals set up as suggested in the Google article and also have some issues with Moz saying we have duplicate content, which the pagination should "fix" as far as I understand it.

From the article:

rel="next" and rel="prev" are orthogonal concepts to rel="canonical". You can include both declarations. For example, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2&sessionid=123 may contain:

[ViviCa1]

We have the exact same issue, and I found this reply from Dr. Pete helpful regarding this (assuming that what he says is still true): https://moz.com/community/q/pagination-issues-on-e-commerce-site-duplicate-page-title-and-content-on-moz-crawl

His reply:

Unfortunately, Moz Analytics/PRO don't process rel=prev/next properly at this time, so we may give false alarms on those pages, even if the tags are properly implemented.

It can be tricky, but Google recommends a combination of rel=canonical and rel=prev/next. Use the canonical tag to keep sorts from getting indexed, and then use rel=prev/next for the pagination itself. Your 3rd example (page=2...) should rel=prev/next to the URLs before and after it but then canonical to the page=2 variation with no sort parameter. It can get complicated fast, unfortunately, but typically rel=canonical can be implemented in the template. So, once you've got it figured out, it'll work for the entire site.

[CleverPhD]

I think you guys are missing the point.  Anything after the hashtag is ignored. As far as the crawler is concerned, all the links to page 2,3,4,5 are all the same URL - that is why the crawler does not see the other pages.

There is no issue with canonical or how it interacts with the rel next prev.  My point on the canonical was simply for illustrative purposes and looks to be implemented correctly.

Separate from the canonical the rel next prevs are setup incorrectly and that needs to be fixed once the issue with how the paginated pages are linked to using the URL with the hashtag parameters.

[LoganRay]

I get how hashes work.

Crawlers do see the page=2, page=3, etc. URLs because the right/left navigation buttons to the side of the numbers link to them. I just proved this by crawling the site in Screaming Frog and doing a search for page=, they're all found.

Becky, there's something larger at play here, potentially with your CMS configuration. It looks like the navigation for paginated sections is messed up. Mouse-over the links and look at the URL in the lower left of your browser, and then click the link and look at your URL bar. The results are very different from what you see on mouse-over. I'd recommend your first step is to talk to your developers and see if they can fix this issue. As VivaCa mentioned, you could be getting false alarms on duplicates here from Moz, so you might be clear with the canonical and prev/next fix - Screaming Frog finds all of those tags properly.

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Thank you for this. One thing I am confused about is, if Google doesn't crawl those paginated pages, why will it pick up the meta as duplicate?

Thank you for highlighting the links - I hadn't noticed this before.

Where should the rel next prev be coded?

Thanks for your feedback

[BeckyKey]

Hi,

Yes there is javascript to sort the results on those pages.

Is the solution to have these URLs page=2 etc, correctly linked from the page number?

Then ensure rel/prev are used correctly?

I'm also concerned about the content we have at the bottom of the products being shown as duplicate.

[CleverPhD]

I could write out how to implements rel next prev but it would be better to look at these articles

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

https://moz.com/ugc/seo-guide-to-google-webmaster-recommendations-for-pagination

[BeckyKey]

No problem thank you

[BeckyKey]

Regarding the links which point to pages, but include the hash. If Google is only seeing this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches

Will it be seeing these as pages which have duplicate content?