Duplicate cID pages created by Concrete5

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Hi
I'm having some issues where a site we are working on seems to be making multiple pages going to the same page. An SEO specialist has run a report and found a number of duplicate pages created by C5.

We are concerned that this is going to dilute or worse penalise the way google sees the site.

http://www.sitename.co.uk/
http://www.sitename.co.uk/index.php?cID=?akID[155][atSelectOptionID][]=134
http://www.sitename.co.uk/index.php?cID=?akID[155][atSelectOptionID][]=123
http://www.sitename.co.uk/index.php?cID=?akID[155][atSelectOptionID][]=41


Is there a way of stopping google from accessing these duplicate 'cID' pages and stop them being made? Also is there a way of getting rid of the ones that are there? We've done a number of sites in C5 and are beginning to get concerned about this...

chassa2556
 
jbx replied on at Permalink Reply
jbx
These don't look like duplicate pages to me...

Anything after the initial ? is just a part of the query string. This wont affect your ranking. It's quite normal to have different query strings, but all going to the same page... It's still the same page, with the same URL, just being passed different parameters...

Jon
chassa2556 replied on at Permalink Reply
chassa2556
Thanks for your reply Jon however on the SEO report they are being flagged as duplicate pages as they are going to the same page. He is concerned this is going to adversly affect our rankings. Is there a way of stopping this from happening?
jbx replied on at Permalink Reply
jbx
Well, I'm not an seo expert, but I would double check with yours, 'cos I think he may be wrong here...

Take the example of Affiliate links:
www.www.mysite.com/index.php?affID=1001...
www.www.mysite.com/index.php?affID=1002...
www.www.mysite.com/index.php?affID=1003...

etc...

Different URL's going to the same page. I understand the concept of duplicate pages and I agree with the idea behind it, but this isn't it. This is one page, with one url, with different parameters being passed in. Perfectly valid in my opinion...

Happy to be proved wrong however :)

I think maybe the reason the report has flagged them, is because there are 2 ?'s in each one. This is actually invalid, so could confuse the script that generates the report. I would need to see the actual links to the actual page to figure out which block is causing that to happen...

Jon
TheRealSean replied on at Permalink Reply
TheRealSean
You can edit your robots text to disallow crawling of sites that include query strings with the following

Disallow: /?*

Its very harsh though.

You can also use canonical links this will tell search engines that the page canonical link is the link to use, over any other link
insert this into your header
<?php 
$canonical = $c->getCollectionPointerID() ? Page::getByID($c->getCollectionPointerID()) : $c;
   $nh = Loader::helper('navigation');
   printf('<link rel="canonical" href="%s" />', $nh->getCollectionURL($canonical));echo "\n";
?>
jbx replied on at Permalink Reply
jbx
Just in case it helps others:

I had a dig around on the site and the links were being created by the Category List and Tag Lists on the Blog addon. They didn't seem to be able to generate the links correctly. Chassa's having a word with the addon creator to check if it's a bug or an implementation issue...

Jon
RoyB replied on at Permalink Reply
Guys given your expertise from this thread do you know on our site why Google Webmaster Tools is saying the following have duplicate titles - and how we can fix it? I'm not a developer unfortunately. The site ishttp://www.flyfishinginnewzealand.com/... and has a blog module in the homepage so we can post regular fishing reports - appreciate your time thanks.

Pages with duplicate title tags Pages
Taupo trout fishing report | the New Zealand fly fishing company
/index.php/blog/
/index.php/blog/?ccm_paging_p_b441=2
/index.php/blog/?ccm_paging_p_b441=3
/index.php/blog/?ccm_paging_p_b441=4
4
Fly fishing in New Zealand with guide Gary Lyttle | New Zealand Fly fishing Company Lake Taupo guide
/
/?ccm_paging_p_b346=2
/?ccm_paging_p_b346=3
/?ccm_paging_p_b346=4
/?ccm_paging_p_b346=5
/?ccm_paging_p_b346=6