Two URLs to the same page listed in Google, ignoring redirect?

We encourage users to post events happening in the community to the community events group on https://www.drupal.org.
Andy Inman's picture

I was just checking some search results to one of my own sites, and found that searching drupal content translation spanish (without quotes) currently list two results (different URLs) to the identical content/page, currently shown at positions #7 and #8 on the Google results for me. But, the second URL listed is set up to redirect to the first (and I've checked the redirection is working correctly).

Now, I understood that Google would never do this. Am I just wrong, or have they changed something? Not that I have a problem with the page being listed twice :)

Comments

Did you ever have content

DamienMcKenna's picture

Did you ever have content available at that page? I noticed that you're using a 302 redirect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_302), you might want to change it to a 301 redirect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301).

302 was a mistake, thanks

Andy Inman's picture

Hi Damien. The redirect has always been in place, and the two URLs have always pointed to the same page. I suppose there may have been some brief period when I was configuring things and the redirect was inactive, and maybe the site just happened to get spidered at that point. I did wonder if that might explained why Google indexed it that way.

I understand the 301/302 thing - that was an error on my part, yes it should be 301, I'll change it. That might indeed explain the double-listing.

Thanks for your input.



Currently part of the team at https://lastcallmedia.com in a senior Drupal specialist role.

Google Webmaster tools and SEO Modules

webbroidrupal's picture

Genius,

There is a few explanations for this, and some of them can happen without your structuring the page improperly. Most likely everything is setup fine. The best way to troubleshoot this is to use Google Webmaster tools.

Request Removal of the old page spot #8. It will be removed from the index.

You can restrict the page bing crawled in several ways.

  1. Robots.txt
  2. 301 Redirect ( you have done)
  3. rel cananocal https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en

Also make sure you have all the relevant SEO modules installed.

https://drupal.org/project/seo