JetPack related post is hurting SEO by indexing duplicate URLs

  • Resolved Gulshan Kumar

    (@thegulshankumar)


    7 years, 4 months ago

    Few things of Jetpack are just amazing. But I don’t like its related post module; since it kill SEO.

    Want to see live, how it affect? Let me tell you methods

    1. Search on Google inurl:?relatedposts_hit=1


    2. Click on first link, as site open, quickly copy the full path from the address

    3. Again search in Google inurl:example.com/permalink/ without query string

    4. You will see something like this.

    Meaning by this, JetPack Related post module encourages duplicate URL indexing.

    Now, you may arise a question – What’s about canonical?

    Unfortunately, most of the time it doesn’t work in case of query strings. Seems problem with Google.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • Hi @thegulshankumar

    That URL is used to track clicks for the related posts. I am not sure how this relationship affects SEO so I’m going to ask our related post experts to take a look into this. Please bear with me while they investigate.

    Thread Starter Gulshan Kumar

    (@thegulshankumar)

    Any update on this query?

    Hi Gulshan,

    Thanks for getting back to us. Unfortunately nothing as yet, I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we hear back.

    Hi there, @thegulshankumar!

    It appears the issue is with your site and the use of canonical urls. If they aren’t set as expected, then Google might not be able to fix such an issue as it doesn’t know what url it should set as the main url for the content.

    If you could set the canonical url in the templates or a plugin so that the search engines know what the canonical urls for the page should be, that should do it.

    Thanks for your patience, and hope that helps!

    Thread Starter Gulshan Kumar

    (@thegulshankumar)

    I have setup canonical properly. There is no issue.

    The hard fact is, Google don’t care about canonical. I have seen this many times. It is not guaranteed way to declare which URL we want to index. If URL is accessible from path A, B, it will index regardless of any canonical. It’s up to Google what URL they pick for showing in Search results.

    Focusing on solution, I would appreciate if JetPack simlply offer clean permalink for the related posts.

    I hate query strings.

    Plugin Contributor Enej Bajgori?

    (@enej)

    Hi Gulshan

    One way you can fix the issue is by using a custom plugin.
    The plugin would need to remove the currently enqueued js for the related posts. (related-posts.js)

    And then add it’s own js that does the same thing expect for removing the ?relatedposts_hit=1
    So line following lines would need to be removed. https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/blob/d3d38d0780ba9f998186cdc668e13455751b6711/modules/related-posts/related-posts.js#L238-L240

    Currently the query stings that we add to the urls make sure that when the user clicks on the link the post that the user came from doesn’t show up in the related post list.

    Let me know if you need some help with the custom plugin above.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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