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#5666 – Purge Homepage?

Posted in ‘sh404SEF’

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Wednesday, 13 March 2019 15:51 UTC

yo_ray

Hi
I have a question.
In the past i had my websites homepage (startpage) as a newspage with categoryblog.
Then i changed that and made a new normal (no blog) page as the homepage.

When i now look into the Google Search Console (and i looked also in the past after this change) there i saw that i get links like
...domain.com/?start=0 and this goes on with a few numbers like ...start=8 ...start=16

This sites bring me to the new homepage and does work.
But i cannot see if sh404sef is correctly recognizes them as duplicate.
So i tried to write in alias of the startpage options in sh404sef this urls are still availabe and dont point on the real url of the startpage

I have googled and found out that this ?start=. are anything like parameters of the category blog.

But my start page isn't a category blog.

So i dont know if there is just a purge for the startpage or are there any other special options, or ways to fix this.
Because otherwise i think that Google see this as duplicates of the homepage.
The SEF Urls have the possibility to check which non sef urls sh404sef has recognized but i cant find a way for the homepagee

Thanks for your tips

Thursday, 14 March 2019 09:31 UTC

wb_weeblr

Hi

I cannot comment on that because you did not provide the site URL.

Best regards

Thursday, 14 March 2019 10:18 UTC

yo_ray

I have found out that i can put this parameter on other joomla sites and it works.

On tha site www.xxxx.at i can add www.xxxx.at/?start=0 and it also works.
The google search console shwed me this and other sites with the number 8 or 16 or 24 also with duplicates.

My idea was to add this link in the alias tab of the page but its doesnt help it doesnt forward to just the homepage.

What i dont know if this is a joomla problem or just on this page.
But like i mentioned i have tryd it on 3 sites and i can add the parameter to all of them

my problem what i also thought is i cant see like on other sef urls there i see that sh404sef hat found duplicates but on the startpage i cant see that

And a second question belonging to that
How can i maybe set that www.xxxx.at/?start=0 and www.xxxx.at/?start=8 and so on as canonical pointing to the original

If you need backend access i can send you the data

Thanks for help

Thursday, 14 March 2019 11:16 UTC

wb_weeblr

I have found out that i can put this parameter on other joomla sites and it works.

Yes, that's expected and it will work not just on Joomla sites but on any website on the planet. Adding things in the ULR will:

- either have no effect on the page if that parameter is not used by the website
- or change the display if the website uses that parameter

On a blog page, Joomla uses the start parameter to determine the starting page. Pass start=xx to any Joomla blog page on any site and that will change the page being displayed.
You are now using a single article for the home page and so the start parameter is simply not used by Joomla, it simply discards it.

From a google standpoint, what's most likely happening is:

-you had those URLs in the past when you used a blog home pag
- you changed that
- Google still has records of all the /?start=0, /?start=8, /?start=16,... pages and it comes back regularly to check them. They still work so they are kept but likely marked as duplicates of your home page.

What i dont know if this is a joomla problem or just on this page.

It's not a problem. Not a Joomla problem or any other website problem.

This is typically a case where Google is capable of sorting out the duplicate content by themselves. If you want to be on the safe side, you can indeed add a canonical for all those URLs to the home page. You can do that from the ALiases page using something like this:

Best regards

Thursday, 14 March 2019 12:27 UTC

yo_ray

Ok
Thanks for your help and explanation for the canonical
Kind regards+

Thursday, 14 March 2019 13:09 UTC

wb_weeblr

Hi

You're welcome! Closing this ticket now, feel free to open a new one as needed. If you do so, please mention this ticket number in the new one.

If you created any superadmin account for us, be sure to delete or block it now to avoid unnecessary risk in the future.

And please feel free to post a review on the JED,it helps and we appreciate it!

Best regards

This ticket is closed, therefore read-only. You can no longer reply to it. If you need to provide more information, please open a new ticket and mention this ticket's number.