Converting an Existing Website: Removing Duplicate Meta Data

Rails
1

Hi,

I have searched the forum to see if this has come up before. If it has
and I missed it I am sorry.

I’m fairly new to Ruby on Rails and have converted an existing site. To
avoid annoying redirects and disrupting search engine results I updated
the routes.rb file so that the old file name renders the correct rhtml
file. For example, photos.html renders /photos.

It works but the problem is that Google Webmaster Tools sees duplicate
meta data and titles for each page. I would really appreciate
information on how to correct this. I have been trying to figure out how
to get google to ignore .html files or treat them as duplicate data but
have had no luck so far.

Thanks,

Christine

2

Christine Nyb wrote:

Hi,

I have searched the forum to see if this has come up before. If it has
and I missed it I am sorry.

I’m fairly new to Ruby on Rails and have converted an existing site. To
avoid annoying redirects and disrupting search engine results I updated
the routes.rb file so that the old file name renders the correct rhtml
file. For example, photos.html renders /photos.

It works but the problem is that Google Webmaster Tools sees duplicate
meta data and titles for each page.

What’s an example of what you’re seeing, and how is it not what you
want?

I would really appreciate
information on how to correct this. I have been trying to figure out how
to get google to ignore .html files or treat them as duplicate data but
have had no luck so far.

This may be a Google Webmaster Tools question, not a Rails one.

But…you could set things up so that instead of photos.html routing to
the same place as photos, it simply makes a 301 or 302 redirect.
Presumably Google will then understand that the two URLs are the same
page, though you should check their docs to make sure. And for human
users, the browsing experience will be essentially the same as before.

Thanks,

Christine

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]

3

Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:

What’s an example of what you’re seeing, and how is it not what you
want?

It’s just a message saying pages have duplicate title tags and meta data
and that each page should be unique.

This may be a Google Webmaster Tools question, not a Rails one.

The only information I could find through that route was regarding
multiple domains with duplicate information. I was just wondering if
there was a way to handle it with rails.

Thanks for your suggestion. Right now it doesn’t appear to be affecting
search engine ranking. This is my site and it is not a commercial site
so that’s why I decided to convert it first as a test.

I do have one for a local business that needs to be converted. The rest
are new sites and were published with ruby on rails.

Thanks,

Christine

4

Hi,

you could try putting a canonical tag into your view. Saying google that
/photos is the same content as /photos.html.

Greets, Max.

Am 06.10.2010 16:49, schrieb Christine Nyb:

5

you could try putting a canonical tag into your view. Saying google that
/photos is the same content as /photos.html.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Specify your canonical

Hi Max,

Thank you for your suggestion. I did come across this but thought it
applied only to existing pages not preferred links. I will take a much
closer look to see if this is a good option.

Take care,

Christine