Pages indexed in Google twice

[Desi7892]

Hi,
Sometimes ago I had an issue for about 3 weeks and my pages were generated twice. Meaning I had the same content on pages /live-price/bitcoin as on pages /crypto/live-price/bitcoin (the duplicity was for every cryptocurrency so around 1500 pages). As soon as I noticed this huge problem I immediately redirected (301) /crypto/live-price/bitcoin to just /live-price/bitcoin, taking care of the duplicity.

It has been 5 months since this issue happened, but Google still indexes both pages, so when I enter in Google site:domainname.com/crypto/live-price/bitcoin and then site:domainname.com/live-price/bitcoin it shows both pages (Even tho the version domainaname.com/crypto/live-price/bitcoin has been redirected so many months ago).

I constantly monitor whether the number of pages which are indexed (and shouldn't be) changes, but for about 2 months it has not changed even by one indexed page.

I was wondering whether this is a big problem looking at this from the SEO point of view and if there is anything I could do to make Google realise that those pages should not be indexed (Unfortunately I cannot send sitemap.xml in Google as there is over 500+pages as mentioned before). Many thanks for your advice!

 

[Jennifer Neon]

Hi @Desi7892 ,
In my opinion, this is not a major issue since Google will be redirecting both the pages on same content piece I suppose.

I found this link that could be helpful for you:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/7346706?hl=en

Please let me know if it helped you and if not I can try to look for more solutions.
Thank You

 

[Desi7892]

Hi, @Jennifer Neon thank you for your reply. I was thinking the same that if the pages redirect correctly, there shouldn't be a problem. It is, however, true that since this issue occurred the number of visits significantly dropped (by like 40%!). (This happened over two weeks and last even now)

I thought it was caused by the duplicity which I had on the website and that the number of visitors will get back to my normal rates once Google gets that those pages are already redirected. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

I think that once I lost my positions (because of the duplicity), Google just never put my to my old positions. I have no idea how to get them back, so this was the first thing I was thinking of which still might be an ongoing issue, but you also think it's not, so IDK.

 

[Community]

Be careful not to confuse your perceived problem with something else such as an algortyhm update, you may be looking into one problem as the cause when actually its something totally different.

That said, do checks to make sure your not stacking redirects, or indeed make sure you are 301 redirecting and not anything else.

Another thing to check is to make sure that you have not redirected the canonical URL to a non-canonical URL. It could be that the ones you've redirected to another page, were actually the more appropriate page to redirect to.

 

[Jennifer Neon]

Hi, @Jennifer Neon thank you for your reply. I was thinking the same that if the pages redirect correctly, there shouldn't be a problem. It is, however, true that since this issue occurred the number of visits significantly dropped (by like 40%!). (This happened over two weeks and last even now)

I thought it was caused by the duplicity which I had on the website and that the number of visitors will get back to my normal rates once Google gets that those pages are already redirected. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

I think that once I lost my positions (because of the duplicity), Google just never put my to my old positions. I have no idea how to get them back, so this was the first thing I was thinking of which still might be an ongoing issue, but you also think it's not, so IDK.

Then have you tried removing the URLs from robots.txt file? Because might be the search engine crawlers are still crawling both the URLs.

 

[Desi7892]

Then have you tried removing the URLs from robots.txt file? Because might be the search engine crawlers are still crawling both the URLs.

No, I did not try that, do you think I should list there all URL's with the wrong URL format? That's really interesting idea, thanks.

 

[Desi7892]

Then have you tried removing the URLs from robots.txt file? Because might be the search engine crawlers are still crawling both the URLs.

Hey Jennifer, just wanted to let you know that I think your idea is working! The number of wrongly indexed pages is slowly decreasing. Thank you so much, love you!

 

[Jennifer Neon]

Hey Jennifer, just wanted to let you know that I think your idea is working! The number of wrongly indexed pages is slowly decreasing. Thank you so much, love you!

My pleasure @Desi7892