SEO finding
Two spellings of the same URL both answer 200 and neither points to the other
SEO Warning Severity: Medium
Part of the audit Several URLs each claim to be the page. Finding id: seo.urlVariantsBothAnswer.
What it costs you
Search engines treat the two spellings as two pages with the same content. Links and impressions are split between them, and crawl time is spent twice.
What to do
Pick one spelling, redirect the other to it with a 301, and link only to the one you picked.
What it checks
- Page works with and without a trailing slash
- Page works in upper and lower case
- Address variants each name themselves preferred
- Page works over both HTTP and HTTPS
- Page works with and without www
How to fix it
Redirect the variant to the intended URL
- Pick the spelling that has the most internal links: [links to url] for [url], [links to variant] for [variant url].
- Make the server answer the other spelling with a 301 redirect to it. We do not name the setting, because it differs per server and CDN.
- Where a redirect is not possible (parameters that change the page), set the canonical tag of the variant to the intended URL.
- Change internal links that use the other spelling.
How to check: curl -sI [variant url] answers 301 with a Location header that names the intended URL.
A real case
A site owner's dictionary pages answered at both /MyDictionary.aspx and /mydictionary.aspx, and search traffic was split between the two. When he added a canonical tag to fix it, his CMS put it on every term page and he lost over 40% of his traffic in two days.
How to verify by hand
Search Console impressions split across the variants.
What this relies on
The variant with the most internal links is the intended one.