Duplicate content problem

mustangfan · Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 9 Location: Canada

I noticed a duplicate content problem with this mod.
On my forum when you go on a user's profile page it displays the most popular topic link with the old URL. I have the no duplicate mod installed so its not a problem for me but it can be to others using this mod alone.
I noticed the same thing here when you view the all topics page by user:
http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/search.php?search_author=dcz

ebnx · Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 21

Yeah it seems like zero dupes is a necessity with this MOD.

Are you seeing duplicates when you view topics by user? I actually didn't see any problems from the link you provided.

mustangfan · Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 9 Location: Canada

Yes I see duplicates in the link. On the top of each message, the forum link is OK but the Subject link in red sends to the php URL.

ebnx · Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 21

Oh I see what you're saying--very observant!

I don't know if this is technically a duplicate because when you click through the link with the php URL, it is rewritten (or 301 redirected) to the seo-friendly URL.

But, that's assuming you have zero dupes on. So yeah you are correct--if you don't have zero dupes you will probably see duplicates as a user.

mustangfan · Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 9 Location: Canada

Yes I know zero dupes will fix that but in case some forums don't have both mods, I wanted to let you know.
This is certainly a great mod and I wanted to make my little contribution Very Happy

ebnx · Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 21

Thanks for this tip. I am planning to install advanced rewrite for my forum, and you just gave me further proof that zero dupes is a big necessity for me as well...

SeO · Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 11:10 pm Post subject: Re: Duplicate content problem

Well, this site is using an early custom version, pretty experimental.
We'll use the phpBB3 mod rewrite as released now, but after we convert of course.

So, what you see here is not comparable to our mods.
mustangfan, please tell us a bit more, are you using the last version and can you provide an example link?

It's not supposed to do so : http://phpbbdev.phpbb-seo.net/search.php?search_author=dcz (using 0.2.4 advanced mod rewrite)

Then, talking about duplicate, the suggested robots.txt is enough in itself to prevent duplicate indexing, the zero duplicate is very useful because it allow all kind of links to work and transmit PageRank.
For example, I have no fear to post such a link here : http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/viewforum.php?f=45
Not only this url won't be indexed, but this link will participate a bit in the zero duplicate forum's pagerank.
Then, you can edit topic titles and forum title without problems, because without the zero duplicate, http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/zero-duplicate/this-would-be-a-dupe-vt678.html
and http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/zero-duplicate/advanced-zero-duplicate-vt678.html would be duplicates for "real", both url would be indexed.

This simply allows you to moderate topic titles without jeopardizing your indexing and ranking, which can be pretty useful.

Wink

mustangfan · Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 9 Location: Canada

dcz · Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 4:06 pm Post subject: Re: Duplicate content problem

Well all right, we may URL rewrite this link too Wink

It's only that profiles are not public by default, so these links are not like the more important ones, so the one more file to edit upon install isn't necessarily this worth.

The robots.txt is by the way enough to take care about this type of "small leaks", the zero duplicate is really important in all case more because it will allow you to moderate topic titles than to catch these really tiny bits of pagerank.

The zero duplicate becomes a must when you change all your forum url, like for example when you install the mod rewrite on a previously indexed forum, with natural urls or rewritten by another mod.

++

mustangfan · Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 9 Location: Canada

I was only trying to make this perfect mod more perfect and I knew it was not a big deal Wink