Something happened within the last 2 weeks on our WordPress-hosted site that created "duplicates" by counting www.company.com/example and company.com/example (without the 'www.') as separate pages. Any idea what could have happened, and how to fix it?

[wzimmer]

Our website is running through WordPress. We've been running Moz for over a month now. Only recently, within the past 2 weeks, have we been alerted to over 100 duplicate pages. It appears something happened that created a duplicate of every single page on our site; "www.company.com/example" and "company.com/example."

Again, according to our MOZ, this is a recent issue. I'm almost certain that prior to a couple of weeks ago, there existed both forms of the URL that directed to the same page without be counting as a duplicate.

Thanks for you help!

[GlobeRunner]

Most likely it's a setting in WordPress that has been turned on or turned off. I'm not sure how you were redirecting your site from www.company.com to company.com, but that's typically done in the .htaccess file on the site.

What you'll need to do is verify that it's still happening first. Use a server header check tool to see if company.com is redirecting to www.company.com (or vice versa).

There are several ways to set up these redirects, and you'll have to figure out how you were doing it previously. If you were using a plugin, it could be that the plugin was removed or deactivated (or updated). It could also be in the site's theme, some themes allow you to set your "preferred version" of your domain.

Lastly, I would go into Google Search Console and make sure you have set your preferred domain there (www or non-www) so Google knows which version to use. If you have it set there, there's a chance that your site's rankings may not be affected.

[GastonRiera]

Hi William,

Just as Eric said, it's like a problem triggered by the wordpress CMS.
I know 3 different ways to solve this problem:

1- Using a plugin, that creates a redict 301.
2- Creating a redirection pattern in the .htaccess file. Here more info: 
301 redirect (www.domain.com/index to www.domain.com) - Q&A Moz.com
3- In the case that redirects cannot be done, use rel=canonical in those pages making the problem.
I believe that this solution would need some coding creativity, to create a code that detects the URL non desired and put the right URL in the rel=canonical tag.
More info about that last:
301 Redirect or Rel=Canonical - Which One Should You Use? - Blog Moz.com

Hope its useful.
GR.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi William, thanks for your question! You've received some great responses. Did any help you solve your problem? If so, please mark one or both as "good answers." And if not, please give us an update on the issue you are dealing with, thanks!

Christy

[wzimmer]

Hey Eric,

Your last answer was very helpful, thank you! We were able to fix the redirects so the "www.company.com" pages redirected to the "company.com" pages, or so we thought. Our last crawl is showing us that on top of the duplicate page issues we know have "11% of site pages served 404 errors during the last crawl."

Do you have any insights on where we might have gone wrong?

Thanks again!

[Christy-Correll]

Thanks for marking those good answers, William. I'm so glad they were helpful to you!