Warning On-Page SEO
Duplicate title
- Severity
- Warning
- Impact
- Medium
- Effort to fix
- Low
- Issue code
duplicate_title
Why it matters
Several indexable pages share this title, which makes them compete with each other and confuses searchers.
How to fix it
Give every indexable page a unique title that reflects its specific content.
What this means
This page has exactly the same title as one or more other indexable pages. The evidence lists them, for example "Shared with 4 page(s)". The comparison ignores capital letters and spaces at either end.
Only indexable pages that return a 200 are compared, so a page whose canonical points elsewhere, or that has a noindex, does not count.
Why it matters
- Search results look identical, so people cannot tell the pages apart, and they compete with each other for the same searches.
- Search engines read it as a duplication signal. Duplicate titles often go with duplicate or near-duplicate pages. See Near-duplicate content.
- Google is more likely to rewrite titles it sees repeated across a site.
Common causes
| Cause | Typical fix | |
|---|---|---|
| A template title with no page-specific part, such as `Shop | Brand` on every product | Include the product or page name in the template |
| Paginated pages: page 2, 3 and so on of a category | Add Page 2 to the title, or accept it: paginated series are expected to share a base title | |
| Filter and sort URLs that are indexable | Canonical them to the main category page | |
| The same page at several URLs | Redirect or canonical the copies. See Duplicate content | |
| Location or service pages with copied titles | Write a distinct title for each |
How to fix it
- Look at the group of pages sharing the title. If they are copies of one page, fix the duplication itself.
- If they are genuinely different pages, rewrite each title around what makes that page different.
- Fix templates first; they usually account for most of the duplicates.
Verify the fix
Recrawl and compare. Groups clear once every page in them has a unique title or stops being indexable.
How it affects your score
Finding this issue on any page costs the On-Page SEO 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 title. 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 (low), and in the issues CSV under the code duplicate_title. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.