Additional code added to my home page URL

[nathan.joshua]

I just finished another website and I noticed something strange when Google WMT dashboard finally picked up my website.

In the Optimization > HTML Improvements tab, it says "Duplicate title tags x 2". homepage.com/ and a page called hompage.com/?p=1&cpage=1.

When I go to homepage.com/?p=1&cpage=1 it is the same as my homepage.com.

This means Google is seeing 2 pages that are exactly the same on my website.

I tried redirecting hompage.com/?p=1&cpage=1 to hompage.com/ but it created a redirect loop.


Has anyone had this problem before?
Is there a way to solve it?
Does it affect my Google rankings?

[Tiggerito]

The main thing you should do is find where the link is to the alternate home page and change it to your true home page.

The redirect will then help Google remove it from the index.

How are you doing the redirect?

[nathan.joshua]

Originally Posted by Tiggerito

The main thing you should do is find where the link is to the alternate home page and change it to your true home page.

I searched my entire website in Notepad++ and couldn't find any reference to ?p=1&cpage=1.

Originally Posted by Tiggerito

The redirect will then help Google remove it from the index.

It seems Google now thinks homepage.com/?p=1&cpage=1 is my home page

Originally Posted by Tiggerito

How are you doing the redirect?

cPanel redirect feature. However, when I try to redirect it is telling me it will create a redirect loop and does not add it to my .htaccess.

This is very strange, and I've yet to find any reference to this behaviour on Google search.(the only page referencing to "?p=1&cpage=1" is this thread).

If I search for mydomain.com/?p=1&cpage=1 on Google I can see it.

Does anyone know what ?p=1&cpage=1 actually does? Maybe we can go from there.

The only thing different I did with this domain is add a redirect for homepage.com/index.php -> homepage.com. Could this be causing it?

[nathan.joshua]

Originally Posted by nathan.joshua

I searched my entire website in Notepad++ and couldn't find any reference to ?p=1&cpage=1.


It seems Google now thinks homepage.com/?p=1&cpage=1 is my home page


cPanel redirect feature. However, when I try to redirect it is telling me it will create a redirect loop and does not add it to my .htaccess.

This is very strange, and I've yet to find any reference to this behaviour on Google search.(the only page referencing to "?p=1&cpage=1" is this thread).

If I search for mydomain.com/?p=1&cpage=1 on Google I can see it.

Does anyone know what ?p=1&cpage=1 actually does? Maybe we can go from there.

The only thing different I did with this domain is add a redirect for homepage.com/index.php -> homepage.com. Could this be causing it?

Ok I found a solution for this:

Add this to your .htaccess:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !="" 
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/%1? [R=301,L]

What this does: All query strings from the homepage, like homepage.com/?p=1 will auto redirect to your home page.

Still trying to figure out how this happened in the first place .. who cares, problem solved

[jjmcd82]

Originally Posted by nathan.joshua

Add this to your .htaccess:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !="" 
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/%1? [R=301,L]

What this does: All query strings from the homepage, like homepage.com/?p=1 will auto redirect to your home page.

Still trying to figure out how this happened in the first place .. who cares, problem solved

This is really, really awesome! I have no idea where Google comes up with these queries strings, but it has indexed a ton as duplicate content and now I can finally get rid of 'em!

[Tiggerito]

Originally Posted by nathan.joshua

Ok I found a solution for this:

Add this to your .htaccess:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !="" 
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/%1? [R=301,L]

What this does: All query strings from the homepage, like homepage.com/?p=1 will auto redirect to your home page.

Still trying to figure out how this happened in the first place .. who cares, problem solved

I'd be vary careful with that solution. It's like using a sledge hammer to fix a ding. You will most likely break a lot of other things. e.g. campaign tracking code, AdWords landing pages, internal paging, social links with tracking code...

What was the original redirect code you tried? Let's try and fix it. Show us any other rewrites/redirects you also have as this may give light into why you caused a redirect loop.

It's not just your own website that can cause Google to index funny pages:

Any previous versions of your website may have used that page. Google has a long memory.

Check your xml sitemap generate and rss feed. They can also tell Google lies.

Other website may link to that page. I see a lot of random indexed pages on my website due to crappy domain info websites with buggy link generators.

[nathan.joshua]

Originally Posted by Tiggerito

I'd be vary careful with that solution. It's like using a sledge hammer to fix a ding. You will most likely break a lot of other things. e.g. campaign tracking code, AdWords landing pages, internal paging, social links with tracking code...

What was the original redirect code you tried? Let's try and fix it. Show us any other rewrites/redirects you also have as this may give light into why you caused a redirect loop.

It's not just your own website that can cause Google to index funny pages:

Any previous versions of your website may have used that page. Google has a long memory.

Check your xml sitemap generate and rss feed. They can also tell Google lies.

Other website may link to that page. I see a lot of random indexed pages on my website due to crappy domain info websites with buggy link generators.

**You are absolutely right, for e-commerce websites, some CMS websites and websites that use "campaign tracking code, AdWords landing pages, internal paging, social links with tracking code" this redirect code will cause more problems than it solves.

However, my website does not use the above so it works fine.

For anyone using this code: Make sure your website does not use the above**.

What we need is an SEO to tell us if query stringed pages have a negative affect on the real pages. It's logical that it would in my experience.

[Tiggerito]

You might not use it, but others who link to your website may.

I had to reverse engineer an issue which was down to me using a URL shortener that automatically added campaign tracking code (dilvr.it). My use of it in tweets to a domain which poorly handed query string parameters were causing the links to fail.

Luckily, the recipient of the links raised the issue that my tweets were broken and I worked out it was their website. For the reason of that one websites problems I disabled all tracking.

If there is one case like this, there will be others.

[nathan.joshua]

Originally Posted by Tiggerito

You might not use it, but others who link to your website may.

I had to reverse engineer an issue which was down to me using a URL shortener that automatically added campaign tracking code (dilvr.it). My use of it in tweets to a domain which poorly handed query string parameters were causing the links to fail.

Luckily, the recipient of the links raised the issue that my tweets were broken and I worked out it was their website. For the reason of that one websites problems I disabled all tracking.

If there is one case like this, there will be others.

Maybe there is a more.. subtle way to do this with robots.txt:

Disallow: /specificQuery

Do you think this would work? I've yet to try it as it could possibly disallow the homepage.

[Tiggerito]

I think it's better you do nothing in favour of these ideas.

Google is only giving you automated hints. You don't want to take these and do strange things (as per your suggestions) to damage your website.

Focus on what matters...content

and resolve canonical issues if you have the resources.