Article has multiple URL's

[KRASH]

original:

Code: Select all

http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5471-joomla-3-0-2-released.html

versus:

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http://www.joomla.org/announcements/really-serious/5471-bullshit.html

Oh wow the bullshit url is already indexed in google.

[Alex7011]

Yeah, I'm really fed up of this problem too.
Been trying to tackle it with mod_rewrite rules but it can't get it work properly.

Basically, if this problem doesn't get fixed, I'm going to drop Joomla altogether.

[teokolo]

This is a HUGE problem, since there are tons of websites linking with wrong url, and joomla is not giving 404

For example

site.xx/news/13341-google-has-been-hacked
site.xx/news/13341-google-has-been
site.xx/news/13341-google-has..
site.xx/news/13341-google-has-been-hacked-by-joomla
site.xx/news/13341-whatever

[kschroder]

i just implemented your tip. how long does it take to take effect and deindex the pages? how will i know they are deindexed?

Depends on your site. But you don´t be surprised if it takes 2 weeks.

[dd5]

@rboersma

Sorry for a very late reply, i stoped checking these forums as there was no help from dev's regarding this, which is a very big issue.

As for robots.txt, i've disallowed url's, which were creating duplicate content as joomla is allowing spyders to visit a page, which shouldn't even exist.

I had problems with url's containing numbers in them and categories, which i solved with inserting the following lines into robots.txt:
Disallow: /*1
Disallow: /*2
Disallow: /*3
Disallow: /*4
Disallow: /*5
Disallow: /*6
Disallow: /*7
Disallow: /*8
Disallow: /*9
Disallow: /*0
Disallow: /*category-name-1
Disallow: /*category-name-2
Disallow: /*category-name-3
Disallow: /*category-name-4

But i also wanted to keep few pages, which contained numbers in the url, so for them i've used:
Allow: /some-page-1$

Be aware: When you upgrade Joomla, it will rewrite modified robots.txt to it's original, so if you don't pay attention (like i didn't), you'll get duplicate url's again as spyders will crawl newly default robots.txt.

It has been 9 months since i've had this issue and i didn't had any problems since then (see the post with a solution which worked for me). It's delirious that we have to go thro all this self exploring fixes just to make something work, which supposed to work out of the box in the system that is used so widely.

I've started using Joomla long time ago, but since i had this, i've moved most of my clients and my projects away from it as there is obvious a flaw in url system or i just don't know how to setup it right - doesnt matter.
Anyway, as for a huge lack of support from dev's (doesn't include the community), i don't recommend Joomla to anyone anymore.

[CarLease UK]

I am also experiencing what seems like self-generated duplicate URL's, has anybody come up with a fix for this? My home page is the main concern, it has 3 "clones", my understanding is that from an SEO point of view this is a NO NO!!!!, any help appreciated. My site is www.carlease.uk.com, and can be found for example under /#, ???

[exps1]

I have run into this problem where the Google Bot seems to be indexing non-existent pages causing duplicate url error in WebMaster tools. Joomla 2.5.9 SEF /htaccess enabled.

Example:
You have a URL http://www.mysite.com/good-link , which works no issues

You get a bunch of seemingly non-existent and concatenated links like:
http://www.mysite.com/good-link/8-category
http://www.mysite.com/good-link/8-categ ... -good-link (two valid links concatenated to make a bad link)
http://www.mysite.com/good-link/22-category

The issue is that you never intended the category view to get indexed, but it has.

In our case we did the following to correct:
1) set robots value to "no-index no-follow" on categories (or any menu items you don't want indexed)
2) set all menu items SSL to "Off" to force absolute URLs (seems to have stop link concatenation)
3) only have one menu item pointing directly to an article, any other menu item pointing to the same article uses an External menu item type (more on this below) using the SEF link copied from the site.
4) do not try to correct in Redirect Manager - let the bad links drop out of Google index naturally

It seems that in our case the problem of indexed category views was caused by switching menu items from type Single Article to Alias and not clearing the alias value before saving. This causes the URL to display a Categories View which is completely unexpected, however bot does mind indexing and following.

To reproduce:
- create two menus
- create menu item for single article on menu 1
- create menu item for same article on menu 2
- save and check links, might be something like http://mysite.com/subject/my-article on menu 1 (top nav) and http://mysite.com/my-article on menu 2 (side nav)
note: This maybe undesirable for SEO because you have created two links for the same thing
- now change menu 2 item to be of type alias point to menu 1 item for the article but don't change the alias. The link http://mysite.com/my-article will now display a categories view. However, the menu link on the site works correctly so you will not see the problem unless you enter the URL directly.
- now change menu 2 item by clearing the alias and saving. The link http://mysite.com/my-article will now throw 404.

I suspect that there are other ways in which the url routing is causing the categories view to be returned on what should be invalid links. At the end of the day not a Google Bot or WebMaster Tools issue.

[exps1]

I forgot one thing. We added the following code to top of the template index.php file to force 404 on indexed URLs that include category and /or concatenated URL's

/**
* Following code is used to force search engine indexed links to pages that
* do not exist on the indexed URL to throw a 404 error (page not found).
*
* Issue occurs when JRoute returns a page result on a URL that should be invalid
*
* Requires: SEF / htaccess enabled
*/
$menu = JSite::getMenu();
//the menu item requested
$active = $menu->getActive();

//full SEF URL requested
$page_url = JURI::current();

//create full SEF URL from menu item
$compare_url = JURI::root().$active->route;

if($compare_url != $page_url && $page_url != JURI::root()){
$app = JFactory::getApplication();
//Redirect to non-existent page to throw 404 - specify 301
$app->redirect(JURI::root().'badcatindex.html','Indexed URL not valid', 'message', true);
}

What this code does is force the URL indexed by search engine to be an actual SEF URL, otherwise throw 404 to tell search engine to drop URL.

[Stockypotty]

Has anyone been able to address this in a more efficient way?

I currently have it set up as:

mysite.com/arcade/game1

Which can then be accessed by changing the category:

mysite.com/puzzle/game1
mysite.com/action/game1
mysite.com/strategy/game1
mysite.com/sports/game1
mysite.com/racing/game1

How the hell has Joomla been created to create all these additional url's when it's not specified?

How is this not a major problem in joomla?

Hopefully we can find something soon

[Wootah]

anyone of the long term forum members able to help this issue and explain what we should do?

[Wootah]

I found this just now: http://forge.joomla.org/gf/project/joom ... m_id=28478

[Eibelius]

Hi,
any news on that problem. I do experience exactly the same kind of behaviour.

Did solve it by use of .htaccess and a permanent redirect, but it takes *too much* of my time!

Best regards
Eibelius

[richbrown360]

I've got exactly the same problem after an upgrade from 1.5 to 2.5 using jupgrade!

I have a few other sites that do not have this problem and the only difference between them is they were never upgraded using jupgrade. So I am fairly sure this is the problem.

I think what i will try is to delete all categories and articles then remake them under a new name / alias ids. Then i will redirect old urls to these new ones.

Well i will redirect as long as I dont get the same problem for new artcles as well.

If that happens

I don't think this is gonna work.....

Any one have any solutions other than reinstalling joomla?

[prophotodx]

Here is the tracker for this issue...not sure if this was posted before. Originally reported October 2012.

http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla ... m_id=29428

[vadkos]

I,ve SOLVED my problem

The Joomla 2.5 was creating new non-existing paths and non-existing articles which was combination from few items.
I found that all new items comes throughout blank main menu ( text separator )
In MySQL #__menu in "component_id" column was 22 instead of 0

Hope it will help someone

[2cheez]

Vadkos - could you please expand on your answer. I'm not clear on what you changed / edited.

[skatercorpse]

Is there any news about this problems? I noticed something similar also in Joomla 3.x...

[2cheez]

I personally still have not found a solution to this problem.

[changlee]

I found the solution using the method of creating 2 menus. Also, I usually create a default NOT published menu for that purposes.

[kuknoor]

Me too experiencing the same problem tried a lot to get rid of this problem but failed to do so ,anyone from the joomla community can help us out with detailed explanation of the problem..

Thanks in advance

[yadayada14]

Agreed, this is a mess and a serious problem for a CMS like Joomla. Joomla is creating URLs that have not been specified by the site admins. I can't see how these are being linked to and/or how Google is finding them, but the following URLs are the biggest problem:

http://www.domain.com/component/content ... rticlename

They're all getting indexed by Google. It's a mess.

Is there any update on this? Has it been investigated by Joomla team?

[changlee]

What is your problem exactly?

[tappy52dog]

Hatatitla, that is such a major SEO flaw with Joomla, it's almost hilarious. Joomla has had this duplicate url problem for a long time now, I just don't think the developers really care.. I mean how in the heck can a fake url like: http://www.joomla.org/announcements/rea ... lshit.html

Still show this page succcessfully: http://www.joomla.org/announcements/rel ... eased.html

The only common part of the url structure that is correct is the 5471, the urls are completely different otherwise.. Imagine all the duplicate content penalties from Google right there. Huge, yet such an obvious glitch that wrecks havoc with SEO.

[Daniel Will]

1. Add canonical tags
2. Make sure the page is internally linked with the desired URL that you wishes to get indexed

[wirkkalaj]

This is a serious problem and I have yet to see an official acknowledgement from the Joomla team that the problem even exists. Has anyone made any headway on a better fix other than dd5's? Why is there no official help here? Can anyone confirm that upgrading to Joomla 3.x will fix the problem?

[wirkkalaj]

1. Add canonical tags
2. Make sure the page is internally linked with the desired URL that you wishes to get indexed

Well this seems like a far to easy of a fix. Will this really work for eliminating the hundreds of duplicate pages that Google has indexed?

[counselor09]

It appears that Google follows links present on the pages from one page to another when a "site:www.mydomain.com" is entered on the Google home page. Category blog menu items place links under "more articles" and "pagination", whereas if one places a single article type of entry no such entries are placed. Of course, one can turn off these functions, if one wants to do category blog types for menu items.

Comments please.

[dorsa]

do you need to change the number representing the article id in the URL according the the article ID that you are currently viewing?

[piXieDust]

This is a serious and perplexing problem for me. Many, many pages are found by Google that simply do not (and have never) existed. Joomla happily serves up these false links with a mash of mismatched category headings, article content and listings that look very unprofessional...

[Tritonus]

Same issue here. Joomla 3.2.1 is creating non-existing url's which are being indexed by Google.

My only temporary solution is to block the following url's through robotx.txt:
Disallow: /forum/
Disallow: /10-musikipedia/
Disallow: /106-musikipedia/
Disallow: /13-musikipedia/
Disallow: /4-musikipedia/
Disallow: /7-musikipedia/

All pages on my site are "Single articles". I do not have a blog, and I do not even have a folder called "forum" or a menu link set to the url "forum". Weird...