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Joe H.
Joe H.
User

Google says I have duplicate web page affecting SEO, need to remove one of them  en

Autor: Joe H.
Visited 2372, Followers 1, Udostępniony 0  

I have found a issue affecting my SEO while on Google Webmaster tools. This involves a Duplicate page, submitted URL not selected as the canonical page. I do have the canonical tag in the header, appears in both pages. Google decided on which page to declare as the page to be indexed. This page, https://www.badmancharters.com/index.html I thought was being indexed regularly and used in my search rankings. This isn't so.

The current page that Google is using and indexing is the https://www.badmancharters.com/ . From what I've read it is different then the .../index.html page somehow as far as SEO is concerned, hence creating a duplicate page and conflict with ...com/, which Google doesn't like.

What I would like to know is somehow 1) can I remove either one of the pages, 2) edit one of them to take the place of the other page, 3) or ??? so I no longer have a duplicate page. Apparently it's been this was for awhile and I just realized/found the error. Duplicate pages are not good, both pages actually exist and if I redirect one to another, I can't actually find the ...com/ page. I want to make them as one or remove one of them.

Screen shot included.  

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Paul M.
Paul M.
Moderator

Hello Joe,

Your meta tag references the non-https version of your index page, yet your site appears to have SSL enforced:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.badmancharters.com" />

Therefore you should amend the meta tag as follows:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.badmancharters.com" />

There is actually only one page on the server, but the two differing protocols make it appear to Google as if there are two, and you have reinforced this by using the metatag, which was not strictly required in the first place.  Google sees https://www.badmancharters.com as authoritative, but you are telling it no, http://www.badmancharters.com is preferred!

Note also that the fact that Google has excluded one 'version' from its index does not in itself carry any negative connotation.  An exclusion is neither an 'error' nor a 'warning' from Google.

Kind regards,

Paul

https://webx5.pro

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Posted on the from Paul M.
Joe H.
Joe H.
User
Autor

All this occurred before we changed protocols. It's actually been that way for awhile. Google is regarding it as duplicate pages. When the certificate was added a couple days ago, I performed a rewrite/redirect  for HTTP to HTTPS through a simple web.config file.

Is the ...com/ regarded as the default page? If not then how can ....com/index.HTML and ...com/ be seen as two different pages? Because that's what happening. If so, duplicate material like that will likely be penalized in the rankings.

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Posted on the from Joe H.
Paul M.
Paul M.
Moderator

Firstly, there is a difference between duplicated pages/content and duplicates which are excluded from Google's index.  You will not be penalised for the latter...  quite the contrary in fact, as borne out by this extract from Google's official documentation:

What not to look for

  • You should not expect all URLs on your site to be indexed. Your goal is to get one version of each page indexed: the canonical version. Any duplicate or alternate pages will be labeled Excluded in this report. Duplicate or alternate pages have substantially the same content as the canonical page. Having a page marked duplicate or alternate is a good thing; it means that we've found the canonical page and indexed it. You can find the canonical for any URL by running the URL Inspection tool.

Status

Each page can have one of the following general status classes:

  • Excluded: The page is not included in the index, but we don't think that's an error. The page might be in an intermediate stage of the indexing process, or it is deliberately excluded by you (for example, by a noindex directive) and is therefore behaving as expected.

Ref: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203?hl=en

Joe H.
Is the ...com/ regarded as the default page?

There is only one unique file on the server.  When you type www.badmancharters.com into your browser address bar you are in effect saying, "fetch me the file currently marked as the index file in the root directory from the server".  At the time of writing your directory index file appears to be 'index.html'

Joe H.
...how can ....com/index.HTML and ...com/ be seen as two different pages? Because that's what happening.

Actually, that's not the case.  Consider the following:

http://badmancharters.com

https://badmancharters.com

http://www.badmancharters.com

https://www.badmancharters.com

All of these point to the same file on the server (currently index.html).  "Your goal is to get one version of each page indexed: the canonical version.", like the Google documentation says.  You've specified your canonical version as http://www.badmancharters.com but you don't appear to have backed this up with the correct rewrites/redirections on the server.  Your canonical version should appear in my browser address bar if I type/request any of the other three URLs, yet this is not happening.  The only redirect in operation at the moment seems to be from http:// to https:// pages, which runs contrary to what you have specified as the canonical page in the metatag.

And the redirection from non-www to www pages is missing completely.

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Posted on the from Paul M.