Mysterious Page Duplications

[tommer]

This is probably a strange request from this long-time lurker, – – but I’m wondering if someone could take a look-see at this gent’s problem with a page of his website seemingly duplicating itself, and showing up on his search-pages, yet not in his files. Here’s the link on the contractor-site (contractortalk) where he discusses the problem. As you’ll see anyway, – – I’m ‘Tom R’ over there. Thanks in advance for any input . . . http://www.contractortalk.com/f101/know-how-remove-duplicate-webpage-cant-locate-136930/

[tommer]

No takers on this one?? Anyone have any ideas what’s goin’ on?? Or, at least, if not what’s causing it, – – what he can do to fix it??

[Senff]

No mystery here. Look into canonical pages: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en

[tommer]

Thanks, Senff, – – yes, I was on that same page earlier today while searching for an answer, – – thing is, – – these aren’t ‘variations’ of pages he managed to generate on his own, – – these seem to be generating themselves from some outside force or someone else, no??

[Senff]

There must be some site linking to that specific URL, I think. Might want to check with Google Analytics if there are any referrers.

[tommer]

traq, – – I appreciate the wisecrack, – – but maybe you didn’t catch that he can’t locate the offending page, – – therefore he can’t add anything to it’s ‘alleged’ head section.

[tommer]

Thanks, Senff, – – he did mention so far that it is shown in his Google Webmaster tools as multiple duplicate pages, – – maybe he can gleen more out of that . . .

[Senff]

The “offending page” is the same as the non-offending one.

http://www.vanguardhomedesigns.com/products.html?imz_s=c7maq
http://www.vanguardhomedesigns.com/products.html?blah=aaaaaaaaa
http://www.vanguardhomedesigns.com/products.html?meh=012345

They are all the same actual pages. It doesn’t matter what comes after “.html”, it will all just lead to products.html. And so in that file you’ll need to add the canonical tag, so that Google knows that http://www.vanguardhomedesigns.com/products.html is the only page of these that should be indexed.

[tommer]

Interesting, I didn’t know it would work like that. Thanks Senff!!

[tommer]

Thanks, traq, – – that does make it clearer, although I am still a little confused on why they would appear rather suddenly, and why, for instance, it’s only happening on that particular page. I guess you could say I’m now understanding the cure better than the cause . . .

[sidingcontractorsus]

I used to have the same problem on my own site http://www.sidingcontractors.us but it is now fixed.

Something you should know is Ahrefs and Google Webmaster Tools can help you tell which pages on your site has backlinks, which isn’t just good for issues, but it’s also good if you’re restructuring a website and changing the URLs as it will help tell you which URLs are really important to redirect.

[Author]

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