#1124 – duplicate URL's

Hi

We can't do anything speaking in general terms. Please provide 2 URLs that are marked as being duplicates, so that we can look at them and see if they are indeed duplicates and if sh404SEF is involved in that.

In general Google search console doesn't talk about "duplicates URLs", they talk about duplicate titles or meta description. Is it what you are talking about?

But again, we need to talk about 2 specific URLs, not in general terms.

Rgds

Hi

yes, it looks normal that you get this kind of warnings: you are redirecting both URLs to the /index.php URL.

Why are you doing this?

Rgds

Hi

Well something on your site is sending any request for, for instance, www.xxxx.nl/producten/raamfolie/raamfolie-op-maat-gemaakt-detail.html to www.xxxx.nl/index.php, which is causing what you see in Google search console.

It might be in your htaccess, or maybe you have setup some redirects yourself, either in sh404SEF or using the Joomla redirect component?

I can quickly review your configuration, if you want. Could you please provide us with superadmin credentials to your website. You can create a temporary account, and delete it afterwards, but it must have superuser level.

Thanks and regards

Hi

Here is what I could note:

- Let's talk about the "Raamfolie op maat gemaakt" product
- There are currently 2 URLs for it in the URL manager

If I visit the category page (https://www.xxxx.nl/producten/raamfolie.html), the link to the product is the second one: https://www.xxxx.nl/raamfolie/raamfolie-op-maat-gemaakt-detail.html

I have no idea why you have two links. One thing is for sure, you have added something on your site that automatically redirect some links to /index.php.

At this stage, I can only confirm it's not sh404SEF doing it: I disabled sh404SEF and if yo visit www.xxxx.nl/producten/raamfolie/raamfolie-op-maat-gemaakt-detail.html, you are still redirected to www.xxxx.nl/index.php.

So it means your .htaccess file is doing this, and that's where you have to look next.

Rgds

Hi

No, it's not really strange. Somebody saw that there was 2 sets of URLs, or changed settings to have new URLs but didn't Purge sh404SEF database, and then added rules in your .htaccess file to make a redirect. Except those redirects are wrong and causing what you see.

That said, an option is to not do anything and let Google forget progressively about them.

THe real good option is:

1 - find the rules in .htaccess file and remove them
2 - Delete the secondary URL from sh404SEF database and only leave one URL

Is this a live site or are you just finishing development?

Rgds

Hi

Rich snippet is not really something for sh404SEF. What I mean is that it should be handled by Virtuemart directly, because this is markup that must be added right into each product html.
Actually I thought VM already supported that, but it may depends on which version of VM you are using.

There's now another option, using JSON-LD markup. This one is global, meaning it's added at the top of the page, not embedded within each product. But again, it's the ecommerce extension that should do that, because they have all the correct information about the product, while I don't have it.

Rgds

Hi

They may absolute be part of it, though probably not a major thing. But if you are in a compettive market, then yes, every details matter.

I'll leave this ticket open for now, let me know what they say.

Rgds