extra URL's with numbers
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- webfoleo
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 195
- Thanks: 1
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Hi there
I have a client who has said his seo company have found links in his site such as the following:
**Removed at member's request**
and **Removed at member's request**
The link should be just **Removed at member's request**
so the others are not needed.
He is concerned that the Google may penalize for having duplicate pages. Do you know if there is a way to remove the number or those links?
Thanks so much
Rog - Last Edit: 10 years 9 months ago by David Goode. Reason: Requested by member to remove links
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 4193
- Thanks: 42
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Are you using any extensions that change the urls?
Those numbers come from category and/or article id numbers that are appended to the category/article title to avoid creating two pages with the same url.
Some of this depends on how your menu is set up and what menu assignments there are.
What Joomla version is this?
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- webfoleo
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 195
- Thanks: 1
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Hi Ben
Thanks so much. No not using any extensions that would change anything but I think I understand how it's happened now thanks your reply.
When I normally create an article and link it from the menu it takes the alias from the menu sections:
For example:
**Removed at member's request**
arrives from the top level navigation destinations
then the drop down sweden
then the next selection swedish-stuga
However when I developed this site I needed the alias to match those on the old website for seo reasons (that somebody else built), so I couldn't use the natural flow of the menus therefore the following link:
**Removed at member's request**
could only be derived from a hidden menu as the regular menu set up would have been:
**Removed at member's request** derived from:
the top level navigation holiday types
then the drop down northern-lights-holidays
I was just wondering if I can solve this problem whilst using the hidden menu system? No problem if not I will just recommend to the client that he reverts to the usual menu and not the hidden one.
Best Wishes and Many Thanks
Rog
PS. Using Joomla 3.1.1 - Last Edit: 10 years 9 months ago by David Goode. Reason: Links removed at member's request
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 4193
- Thanks: 42
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The best thing to do is use "301 Redirects" to the new urls that are better fit for moving forward with the site. You'll see the old ones slowly drop off of Google over the next 3 months this way and you don't get penalized for it.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633
You can put these in your .htaccess file and they tell search engines that the content is permanently moved to the new url. This means that it doesn't count against you as duplicate content and that you're legitimately moving the content to a new location.
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- webfoleo
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 195
- Thanks: 1
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Thanks Ben
I will try to apply these "301 redirects" but do you know if these random url links are a common problem?
I just received the following email and not too sure what to do at the moment.
..............................................................................................................................................
Hi roger,
They just keep coming at the moment,
Pages with problems
**Removed at member's request**
Pages that should not exist
**Removed at member's request**
..................................................................................................................................................
Thanks so much for your help on this
Rog - Last Edit: 10 years 9 months ago by David Goode. Reason: Requested by member to remove links
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 4193
- Thanks: 42
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This is only a common problem when people try to match content and urls and mess with the menu beyond how it was meant to be used in Joomla.
My suggestion is build the site the way it needs to be and base your menu on that. Hidden menu items can work, but only in a sense that you need them to, not to accommodate past urls.
The last link you posted is just the print view of the page, so that will happen from time to time.
The others have "110-tabbers" and "111-tabbers" in them which looks to be 2 categories with the same name. It's kind of hard to tell.
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- webfoleo
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 195
- Thanks: 1
- This is strangely a Joomla issue that even the biggest Joomla sites suffer from. In our case we tried to correct the issue by putting in redirects into the htaccess file. All we did was confuse things. Eventually we found an SEF extension which you can find in the Joomla Extensions directory and this pretty much sorted out our seo and it is well on the way to recovery. Thanks so much for all your comments here
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