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Dublicate URL & 404 not found: need assistance

by millerb7
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
So when I do a site:mysite.com lookup, it finds all the pages I would imagine it would. Then at the bottom it says it omitted duplicate pages and when I click on that to view them, about 3 of my pages have a duplicate URL just with or without "/" at the end.

Also, in my spiders errors on webmaster tools, it returned two errors, both of which were with the URL listed above as 404 not found.

mysite.com/example could be one of my urls, then it's returning an error on mysite.com/example/

Any idea what that's about?

I'm using wordpress. Maybe it was indexed while I was messing around with things on wordpress and it indexed both pages? I'm almost positive there are not multiple pages but I could be wrong.

Any help is appreciated.
#404 #assistance #dublicate #found #url
  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    It's no big deal in those cases.
    Websites have those frequently.
    Just do a custom 404 page, soft landing, not a stock error message.
    People are not going to web searches the way you did for your
    content.

    Google readily handles cases like that. It's not a penalty or any
    such rot. It's more on some annoying things that happen with urls.

    404's happen. Can't get around them. For one, servers blink, so
    expect some. Typos happen, yours and your potential visitors.

    There is nothing nefarious about your site.

    Just be consistent in how you write things when backlinking.

    The more things you do right, the less effect little annoyances
    like those will hurt. In fact, the will become a non-issue. They
    already are, in reality.

    paul
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    If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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    • Profile picture of the author BigDaddys101
      Just my two extra cents..

      1. Yes 404's are almost always inevitable

      2. Did you know you can get slapped with duplicate content just because google indexed www.domain.com and domain.com

      yes its silly but I just had to fix a site with those types of errors
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      • Profile picture of the author millerb7
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        It's no big deal in those cases.
        Websites have those frequently.
        Just do a custom 404 page, soft landing, not a stock error message.
        People are not going to web searches the way you did for your
        content.

        Google readily handles cases like that. It's not a penalty or any
        such rot. It's more on some annoying things that happen with urls.

        404's happen. Can't get around them. For one, servers blink, so
        expect some. Typos happen, yours and your potential visitors.

        There is nothing nefarious about your site.

        Just be consistent in how you write things when backlinking.

        The more things you do right, the less effect little annoyances
        like those will hurt. In fact, the will become a non-issue. They
        already are, in reality.

        paul
        I appreciate the response. I figured it kind of just happens, was just trying to avoid any penalties, especially since my site is only about a month old and I'm not only using it to practice SEO, but its serving as a "How to" site for motorcycle mods for a lot (1000+) people I know from another few forums.

        Didn't want to get any type of penalties haha. Thanks again!
        Originally Posted by BigDaddys101 View Post

        Just my two extra cents..

        1. Yes 404's are almost always inevitable

        2. Did you know you can get slapped with duplicate content just because google indexed www.domain.com and domain.com

        yes its silly but I just had to fix a site with those types of errors
        Yeah I had read that, I have domain.com set as my default with webmaster, I did add www and non-www version in there, and then had to set my default for google as the non-www version.

        Only did this as I NEVER type in www when I enter addresses on browsers. Nobody I know does either... although I'm sure tons of folks do.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Originally Posted by BigDaddys101 View Post

        Just my two extra cents..

        1. Yes 404's are almost always inevitable

        2. Did you know you can get slapped with duplicate content just because google indexed www.domain.com and domain.com

        yes its silly but I just had to fix a site with those types of errors
        You won't get slapped. Just that google will choose which one to show more
        often. There's no duplicate content penalty with that. You can only get
        a duplicate content "penalty," (as always) if you choose to use duplicate
        content to tweak search engine results. Common things like those above
        are not nefarious. It is a good practice to work on your main domain and
        use a 301 redirect from www to non, or vice versa. But other things like
        the "/" are just laying around waiting to happen and are not in and of themselves
        bad. There's no duplicate content penalty for www and a non www either.
        Google just has to make a split decision on what's better to show and when.
        It's really no big deal. A coupe of years ago, Matt Cutts himself said he sees
        no need to even do a 301 redirect. And don't remove either of them using
        google's url removal tool. If they are both indexed, that's not a bad thing.
        if you remove one, you remove what could be half your results.

        Paul
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        If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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