Duplicated content in Google Webmaster tools

gingo

Hi,

My new photo gallery is online since ca. 3 weeks and it starts to be indexed, but in Webmaster tools I got the error "Duplicate meta descriptions" under "HTML Improvements": some albums are present two times

- domain.com/album-1/
- domain.com/album-1

- domain.com/album-2/
- domain.com/album-2

in other words there were indexed URLs with and without the trailing slash (/).

I created and sent a sitemap with the plugin (even if from the sitemap url no links were indexed till now, but the site is present in many serps).

Why do I have two versions of each album URL?
Is the trailing slash required?

Thank you for replying.

acrylian

Actually the link with the trailing slash should be the right one. The sitemap plugin should generate that one at least. An album is more or less a directory. Seems we have a small bug here that both links work. We will review that.

As a workaround you could enable the html_meta_tags plugin and enable the canonical link option.

gingo

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I had already enabled the html_meta_tags plugin and the canonical link option. And the canonical links are also correct with the trailing slashes. As you said, the problem is that both links work and for SEO that purpose is not good.

Is there any more work arounds?

acrylian

I am afraid I don't know any workarounds except using the sitemap and the canonical link to point google to the right ones. I somehow thought that the "duplicate content" issue is not that dangerous anymore as the google bot learned a bit more to differ.

MarkRH

Suppose you could try the Remove URL's option of Google's Webmaster Tools. You might also modify your .htaccess to add trailing slashes. Here's the start of mine:
`


RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /
#Skip trailing slash rewrite if first rule is met.
RewriteRule ^(.*)(/search/|/archive/|\.)(.*)$ - [NC,S=1]
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ $1/ [NC,L,R=301]
`

gingo

@acrylian: the problem is that the sitemap creates the canonical URLs of the albums without the trailing slash.

@MarkRH: yes the Remove URL's option of Google's Webmaster Tools would be a way, but it would add to much maintenance for checking on regular base all the URLs.

acrylian

Thanks for the note. Will take a look the sitemap as that should create the ones with trailing slash.

Update: The sitemap links are fixed in the support build now.