Google and Duplicate Content

  • Hello, I’ve searched but haven’t seen a question exactly addressing the question I have. Google is showing that the following pages have duplicate meta descriptions and duplicate title tags:

    / and /index.php (Yet both URLs point to the same page content.)

    How do I correct this? Is there a way to fix this using the All in One SEO plugin (which I do have installed)? If so, I’m not sure how to implement the fix.

    I’ve added a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file to redirect /index.php to /. Yet internal searches return a page with “index.php?s” in it. Does this contribute to Google’s “duplicate” status for the / and /index.php pages?

    I’m basically confused on whether there may be several factors leading to Google’s “duplicate” status. Plus, I’m just plain at a loss as to how to fix this.

    Can someone offer some input for this fix? Thanks a bunch.

    Deb

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Thread Starter debncgal

    (@debncgal)

    Can someone tell me whether the following code that’s in my .htaccess file causes the “duplicate” status mentioned in my previous entry? Or is it unrelated, and OK?

    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
    </IfModule>

    Thanks!

    The .htaccess file is fine, the standard one.

    Did you check the address you have in Admin Settings? Did you point it to /index.php? If so, it shouldn’t.

    Thread Starter debncgal

    (@debncgal)

    Thanks for responding, buddha trance. I checked the Admin Settings, but I did not have /index.php plugged in there.

    Since I’ve not found any specific references to this particular issue on the web, it makes me wonder if I’ll be able to figure out where the problem lies. I don’t know what else to check or try.

    Deb,

    see is this thread helps you to pin point the problem down.

    Thread Starter debncgal

    (@debncgal)

    I’d read that thread earlier, but what I haven’t done is carefully review and test my robots.txt file in Webmaster Tools. I’ll spend some time on that next and see if that yields a solution. I’ll report back on my findings.

    Thanks a lot for your help, buddha trance.

    Thread Starter debncgal

    (@debncgal)

    I wanted to report back on the fix for this issue which also helped solve some other issues I didn’t realize existed. The code for the fix came in an article titled Comprehensive URL Canonicalization via htaccess for WordPress-Powered Sites. It’s a detailed, easy-to-understand article. All I can say is, “Wow!”

    Deb,

    I’m glad you were able to solve your problem, I checked the article you mention.
    Based on that article, my question is, do you run an older version of WordPress? If so, please upgrade, for security reasons!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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