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Apr 5, 2011

Blogger: Fix duplicate title tags, description and CONTENT

Lately, when I checked my blog stats in Google Webmaster Tools and drill down in HTML suggestion section, I found sort of errors that make my crawling stats suffer, “duplicate title and descriptions tags”. Looking for some reason in the net and evaluate the structure of my blog template I found these possible causes.

1. Duplicate title and description tags is cause by comment permalinks which search engine treat as different pages while it is simply a link of comment in your post.

2. Another thing is the log Archive Widget (Yes it is) format. When it is in hierarchy format it’s generating a long links. Generated links are not considered by Google as the same pages. Then, Google will prompt these as duplicate pages with duplicate title tags and description.

Do you know?


As you notice, Google Webmaster Tools doesn’t show statistical data about duplicate content. But since Google treat comment permalinks as different pages and give stats in duplicate title and description tags, and then it might give you general idea about duplicate content behavior.

How to fix it?

In order to fix duplicate title tags, description and CONTENT, we need to address the possible causes above.

First step:
Replace the current permalink of the comments.
a. Open your blog template
b. Tick expand widgets and find this code

<a expr:href='data:comment.url' title='comment permalink'> <data:comment.timestamp/> </a>  

c. Replace it with this

<b:if cond='data:post.commentPagingRequired'>
  <a expr:href='data:comment.url' title='comment permalink'> <data.comment.timestamp/> </a>
<b:else/>
  <a expr:href='data:blog.url + &quot;#&quot; + data:comment.anchorName' title='comment permalink'> <data:comment.timestamp/> </a>
</b:if>

Second Step:

Make your blog archive widget in flat list format.


Notes: After doing the instructions above, be patient because it will takes 2-3 weeks to see results. If this post help you, subscribe to my rss feed for free updates

13 comments:

Elmo said...

I'm currently having the same problem but not with the comment title tags but with the post itself. I hope that you can make a tutorial about it and looking forward for your future post discussing a solution for the matter.

Janz said...

Hi Elmo, maybe the problem is in your title tag condition. Give me a moment and I will make it for you. For the meantime just sign up to my rss feed for the latest update or contact me via email.

Daniel Marriott said...

Just what I was looking for thank you.

Misuionesco said...

Was looking for this and found your article. It's very helpful, but I'm facing another problem : I had the archives in flat list from the beginning, but was also set on "daily. Blogger made new urls for each daily archive. After a while a switched to a monthly basis archive. But now blogger also kept the old urls from daily archive and those are causing me duplicate titles and descriptions. I cannot ask google bot to not follow those anymore, cause they do not return 404. The urls are there, they exist, but are not linked from anywhere in the blog. Still working my head around this...

Janzell Jurilla said...

Hi Misuionesco - can you give me some url example of your blog. :)

Misuionesco said...

http:++cursurienglezaonline.blogspot.com/2011_01_02_archive.html
http:++cursurienglezaonline.blogspot.com/2011_06_06_archive.html

These are 2 out 10 links (old daily archives setup) that still exist, but they are all tagged as duplicate meta description and duplicate meta title. I'm not linking to them anymore, because right now I switched to the monthly flat list set up.

mgpelobello said...

Hi! I having trouble also with duplicate title tags.Duplicate title tags appear like this:

-http://godinspiredlyrics.blogspot.com/2012/07/commission-my-soul-lyrics-citipointe.html

-http://godinspiredlyrics.blogspot.com/2012/07/commission-my-soul-lyrics-citipointe.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FgNTup+(GodInspiredLyrics.blogspot.com)

I can't figure it out what's causing the problem.Please help.Thank you so much

Janz said...

Hi Mark,

I guess the duplication is cause by your RSS feeds.

Did you try the steps above I mentioned.

And also take note that if you follow the steps above you will not see the results immediately. It will show right after Google crawl your site again.

Thanks,
Janzell

Me said...

How do I fix duplicate TITLE tags not comment tags? I'm about to move over to Wordpress I'm so frustrated with blogger.

Bakul Angkringan said...

Thenk kyu

Anak Medan said...

great articles , i hope its can resolving my blog problem :(

rajaditya said...

Hi,
I am frustrated with blogger, periodically facing the same problem since I started blogging on blogger platform. Now GWT showing following problems 1.Duplicate Meta descriptions 2. Missing title tags 3. Duplicate title tags.
Although I implemented new script and made changes as suggested by pro-bloggers and it worked fine for couple of days and again this problem started.

I read your article but did not find the script you mentioned in my blogger. Please help me to resolve above issues.

Thanks in advance.

Ahmad Tauhid said...

Nice Share. Thanks