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Thread: Duplicate content issues causing Huge ranking Drop

  1. 05-07-2012, 10:02 AM #1
    jknauff is offline Member
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    Default Duplicate content issues causing Huge ranking Drop

    HI All,
    We've been pretty badly hit with the Penguin update. Our site traffic is down 30-40%!
    So we're going about fixing all the errors that gooogle is telling us in Webmaster.

    We're seeing a lot of duplicate content errors e.g.
    /c-70-storm-windows-panels.aspx
    /c-70-storm-windows-panels.aspx?pagenum=2

    this is seen as duplicate content. We specified pagenum as a URL parameter thinking googlebot will know how to handle but that's not the case. How do fix this issue?

    Secondly because ASDNSF handle product not found and page not found through the system, it's not generating a 404 error code. So we've got a bunch of soft 404 error codes that google doesn't like. How do implement hard 404 error codes generated through IIS for products that are gone.

    Thanks
    Jaishree
  2. 05-07-2012, 12:18 PM #2
    webopius is offline Senior Member
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    I would be amazed if the use of pagenum=2 was the cause of a duplicate content penalty.

    If that were the case, all ASPDNSF sites would be affected and also every other site that uses URL params to distinguish pages (most of them)

    Google is fine with the use of URL params - as long as the page content differs between them. In your case, it does.
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  3. 05-08-2012, 06:45 AM #3
    jknauff is offline Member
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    Yes But the bigger issue is a flaw in the software in my opinion.
    It returns a productnotfound page when a product is deleted.
    e.g. suppose i deleted
    http://mydomain.com/p-123-widget.aspx it does a 302 redirect to
    t-productnotfound.aspx.
    Google doesn't like that- it's a soft 404. From an SEO standpoint it should return actual 404 code.
    We delete products, departments, categories all the time. And we need an easy way to let google know - hey it's been deleted. Don't index it.

    That is definitely hurting us .How would you fix it?
  4. 05-08-2012, 07:54 AM #4
    webopius is offline Senior Member
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    One way to get a hard 404 instead of the Product Not found page...

    Edit showproduct.aspx.cs

    Replace lines like this:
    Code:
    Response.Redirect(SE.MakeDriverLink("ProductNotFound"));
    With this:
    Code:
    Response.Status = "404 Not Found";
return;
    It's possible to do a much more elegant solution within driver.aspx.cs (the page that renders t-productnotfound.aspx) and/or within PageNotFound.aspx.cs
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  5. 05-17-2012, 05:34 AM #5
    medsupply is offline Senior Member
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    I had the same issue. I implemented the suggestions given here and now the product not found page throws a hard 404, which is what I wanted.

    However, the page content is blank and it may look like an error. How can I add some hard coded message to the page?
  6. 06-11-2012, 04:00 PM #6
    jlotty22 is offline Junior Member
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    Oct 2011
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    6

    Cool Add Content Fix

    Hi, I was struggling with this as well...I managed to hard code a message by adding this to the code above.

    HttpContext.Current.Response.Write("<html><head><t itle>Product Not Found</title></head><body><b>Oops...This product wasn't found. Try our search function <a href=\"searchadv.aspx\">HERE</a> to find what you were looking for, or contact us by <a href=\"t-contact.aspx\">phone or email.</a></b></body></html>");

    Response.Status = "404 Not Found";
    HttpContext.Current.Response.End();
    return;