Google webmaster tools - duplicated warnings

Worker Joined: Oct 22, 2005 Posts: 201

Hey guys,

I noticed my ravennuke phpbb2 produce lots of duplicated warning on google webmaster tools...

I noticed the following mod:

- Zero Duplicate phpBB2 (http://downloads.phpbb-seo.com/zero-duplicate-phpbb2-8/)

and I wonder how to install it...

anyone got it installed maybe?

I think rewrite need to be updated or something like that..

even here in this forum: [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

are all leading to the same post... which is really bad..

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 8:58 am

I understand completely as duplicate content within the forums module (and others) has annoyed me for awhile.

There will be a new header class in the next major release that may help with issues such as this; allowing you to mark duplicate pages with the preferred "canonical" page via tags inserted in the head. There are also tags for next and previous for use in pagination, etc.
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Although it's probably doubtful we would be able to incorporate changes to the forum module to accommodate this into the next release. But a foundation for a fix will be there Smile

I haven't looked at how difficult it would be to do the work. It could be relatively easy or a total can of worms... In reality it will likely be somewhere in-between.

I wouldn't use this site as an example as it is not running the latest version of shortlinks and has been customized. It would be difficult, if not impossible, imo, to handle duplicate pages via shortlinks/mod-rewrite alone. In your example links, the 2nd and 3rd links are different views (post and topic) and are required for proper functionality. The last link is required to support pagination. Not sure about the first link, but assume that is unique to this site.

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 9:22 am

This really hearts our google ranking....

in my site it is exactly the same... 4 URL's for each topic...

you don't think the - Zero Duplicate phpBB2 - I linked aboved can help?

To which URL you can point the canonical tag? which one is the source?

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 11:25 am

The canonical tag would have to be inserted dynamically and it's value (or whether it is inserted at all) would depend on the page being viewed. Unfortunately it's not as easy as adding a "static" tag to the head of all of your pages.

Ideally you would edit your forums template to remove most of these duplicate links prior to search engines indexing them. I did this to some degree on one of my sites, but it's too late for that, for you... But you can edit your template to remove as many of the offending links as possible, and there are options for then removing duplicate url's within webmaster tools. But I would not remove links that can still be found by search engines.

Those mods look like they might work, but also look like they might also change the URL's; which would be an even bigger SEO problem. I could be wrong about that though... I don't have time today to look at them in any detail. Although, you may be able to look at their approach and find a solution with redirects.