SiteAud!tLint Support

Warning Content

Duplicate content (exact)

Severity
Warning
Impact
Medium
Effort to fix
Medium
Issue code
duplicate_content

Why it matters

The main content of this page is identical to other pages, so search engines must choose which to show.

How to fix it

Consolidate the pages, make each one unique, or set a canonical to the preferred version.

What this means

The main text of this page is identical to the main text of one or more other indexable pages. The evidence lists them, for example "Same as 2 page(s)".

SiteAud!tLint compares only each page's main content: menus, headers, footers, sidebars and forms are removed first, so shared navigation never counts as duplication. Only indexable pages that return a 200 are compared, and pages with fewer than 50 words of main text are skipped.

Why it matters

There is no penalty for duplicate content that is not deceptive. The cost is that Google picks one version to show and ignores the rest:

  • It may pick a different URL than the one you want.
  • Links and signals pointing at the copies are split instead of combined.
  • Crawlers spend time on copies instead of new pages.

Common causes

  • The same page at several URLs: with and without www, HTTP and HTTPS, trailing slash variations, uppercase letters, or tracking parameters.
  • Print versions and alternate views of the same article.
  • Products in several categories, each with its own URL.
  • Staging or test copies reachable on the live domain.
  • Paginated or filtered pages that show the same items.

How to fix it

  1. Decide which URL is the main one for each group.
  2. If the copies do not need to exist, 301 redirect them to the main URL.
  3. If they must exist, for example a product reachable through two categories, add a canonical tag on each copy pointing to the main URL. Copies with a canonical to another page are no longer indexable, so they stop being flagged.
  4. Update internal links and the sitemap to use only the main URL.

Verify the fix

The Duplicate Content view in Pages groups pages with their exact and near duplicates. Recrawl and compare. See Duplicate content and URL structure for the full workflow.

How it affects your score

Finding this issue on any page costs the Content score 3 points, plus up to 12 more depending on the share of crawled pages affected. Weakens rankings, crawling or measurement. Fix after critical issues.

Find the affected URLs

Open Crawl > Issues and pick Duplicate content (exact). Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (medium) and effort (medium), and in the issues CSV under the code duplicate_content. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.

Guides that cover this issue