Thread

Hi,

I have two URL’s pointing to the same page (counts for each single entry):

URL 1: http://www.my website.com/index.php/news/comments/23288/

and

URL 2: http://www.my website.com/index.php/news/comments/bob_evans_announces_fiscal_2011_second-quarter_results_exceeding/

I am afraid this is considered duplicate content by search engines and it will affect my ranking.

Is there a way so that the URL with the number is not published?

Regards,
Tammo

Try the Canonical Tag plugin

Hi Dylan, thanks for your reply, I actually do but it returns the full path for both URL’s, so I end up with two URL’s again.

Regards,
Tammo

Hi, hospitality. How are you generating your links to the comments page?

Hi Sue,

The links are created through the following code:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="directory" limit="20" show_expired="yes"}
<div class="story">

<h3 class="fn org"><a href="http://{title_permalink=directory/comments}" title="{title} {if category_request}{categories} | {category_name}{/categories}{/if}">{title}</a>
</h3>

{exp:word_limit total="50"}{exp:html_strip}{description}{/exp:html_strip}{/exp:word_limit}
[<a href="http://{title_permalink=directory/comments}">Read More</a>]    
<small>Country:</small> <span class="country"><b>{directory_country}</b></span> • <small>City:</small> <span class="city">{directory_city}</span> • <small>Website:</small> <span class="url">{website}</span>
<small>Category: </small>{categories  backspace="7"}<a href="http://{path=%27directory/categories%27}" title="click for more companies in the {category_name} category">{category_name}</a> » {/categories}

</div><!-- /story-->

{/exp:weblog:entries}

However, I never get a URL with the number in them that way. The URL’s with numbers are listed in Google Webmaster tool under the duplicate content menu

regards,
Tammo

Hi, Tammo -

Google can only follow URLs that it can actually find.  Are you using anything like Google Toolbar? Or can you find where Google is following these links from? That is the key to fixing this - is by making sure that those links aren’t out there to be followed.

Yes, that makes sense, I will have a look.

Cheers,
Tammo

Tammo ,

let us know how you get on

Hi, finally I figured it out. Found the urls listed in my news sitemap. Googles News grabs the news from the sitemap and the URL’s require to contain numbers in order to be picked up by Google News. That’s why I had configured this a long time ago this way.

Thanks for the support!

Best,
Tammo

Very good. Please post again as needed.