How to Fix Shopify Duplicate Content

If you subscribe to a service from a link on this page, Reeves and Sons Limited may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

In this article, we explain how to fix Shopify duplicate content because, although much of your duplicate content may be purposeful, you want to get rid of the clutter that could hurt SEO rankings.

Duplicate content: it can happen to almost anything, from blog posts to product URLs, and category pages to website tags. This is particularly true with ecommerce platforms like Shopify.

Online retailers often sell multiple versions of the same product and may move product pages across different categories. As a result, duplicate content may appear on various unique URLs.

The only issue is that Google canโ€™t always tell the difference between worthless duplicate content and necessary repetition online.

Whatโ€™s Duplicate Content? And When Does it Occur on Shopify?

Duplicate content is when two or more webpages display the exact same information but have different URLs.

Every website, regardless of the platform, is susceptible to duplicate content, due to a combination of automations from the website builder and human actions (intentional or mistaken).

Ecommerce websites tend to have more duplicate content than your average website, since ecommerce brands may revamp product pages, create duplicates for landing pages, or move product pages into new categories.

Shopify users, just like users of any website builder or ecommerce platform, can end up with duplicate content that potentially hurts SEO.

When does duplicate content happen on Shopify?

The written content on a page is not the only thing weโ€™re looking at when it comes to duplicate content in Shopify. It could be the whole page, images, or links to products. If itโ€™s the exact same as another page, you can call that duplicate content.

In Shopify, there are 3 main reasons duplicate content may occur:

  1. From Shopify tags
  2. From category pages
  3. From product URLs

These are the types of duplicate content that Shopify can create automatically, without you doing anything at all. As such, you must also keep an eye on manually generated duplicate content like double blog posts or product pages.

Regardless of the type, itโ€™s essential to learn how to fix Shopify duplicate content to improve the user experience and protect search engine rankings.

Does Shopify Help Automatically Fix Duplicate Content?

Yes, with canonical URLs.

Essentially, a canonical URL places a tag on intentionally duplicated content (like for brands that need multiple product pages for the same/similar items).

For pages with canonical URLs, Google takes them into consideration as legitimately needing duplicates. Those canonical URLs also help indicate to Google when they can merge duplicate content into one page.

Canonical URLs are a passive way to clean up duplicate content on Shopify and other platforms. You should never rely on them completely, though.

Why?

Because canonical URLs serve as hints to search engines. And as we all know, Google is a machine, and hardly represents how a person actually functions.

Therefore, itโ€™s important to learn how to fix Shopify duplicate content yourself. This way, thereโ€™s no leaving it up to Google to decide your SEO fate.

How to Fix Shopify Duplicate Content (With Common Examples)

In the following sections, weโ€™ll present you with examples of when and how duplicate content may occur while using Shopify. Thereafter, we provide a solution for you to fix it on your website.

Fixing Duplicate Content Caused by Shopify Tags

Shopify has a feature that automatically generates pages based on product tags.

In short, each product you add to a store allows you to include tags. These tags serve as organizational elements for you and customers to locate groups of products placed under the same tags.

fix Shopify duplicate content caused by tags

Similar to Shopify collections, every tag you create on Shopify receives its own page. You may never use the separate tag pages, but theyโ€™re there, in the background, automatically created by Shopify.

Note: You can absolutely utilize tag pages similar to how you would collection pages.

But how does this result in duplicate content? Well, itโ€™s possible for a tag page to end up with the exact same content as one of your collections or categories.

For instance, a tag labeled โ€œShirtsโ€ could very well end up with the exact same list of products as a collection named โ€œSummer.โ€ It depends on the company, but perhaps the only โ€œSummerโ€ items available from a brand are shirts.

These would have unique URLs, but display the same products, potentially confusing Google and promoting the search engines to consider them redundant, and therefore hurt SEO.

How to Fix Duplicate Content from Tags

This is one of the trickier issues to resolve in terms of duplicate Content.

First of all, you must figure out if you even have any duplicate content thatโ€™s from tag creation.

For that:

  1. Search โ€œexample.com/collections/all/โ€œ (or โ€œsite:example.com intitle:โ€taggedโ€โ€ if you get limited results from the first search) on Google, but replace the โ€œexample.comโ€ part with your own store URL.
  2. The results should display all tag pages currently existing on your website.
  3. Click through them all and look at the content to see if any of them have the exact same content as another.

What happens when you find duplicate content stemming from Shopify tags?

  • Add a noindex tag to whichever URL you see as the duplicate.

Noindex tags can be added by using the request.path command inside the Shopify theme.liquid file.

Fixing Duplicate Shopify Content Caused by Category Pages in Pagination

One duplicate content problem that happens in Shopify is with the pagination of category pages.

This frequently occurs when a customer jumps from one page to another in your product collection. As you can see, the first page of the collection ends in /coffee-table.

seeing a normal category page through pagination

However, when the user jumps to another page, then back to page 1, Shopify automatically attaches โ€œ?page=1โ€ to the end of the collections URL.

how to fix Shopify duplicate content from pagination

This is no temporary page. It is, in fact, a duplicate piece of content, since itโ€™s a permanent page that gets indexed by Google. And all of the same content is being displayed, but on a different URL (hence, search engines would see this as two pages with the same content).

How to Fix Duplicate Content from Category Pages in Pagination

The solution is to insert some Javascript in your site files.

Unfortunately, there is no standardized Javascript to resolve duplicate content from pagination.

However, there are several blocks of code from developers online that should do the trick:

  1. Shopify Community Forum
  2. Better Shopify Pagination on Github
  3. Javascript solution from 42Connect

Fixing Shopify Duplicate Content Caused by Product URLs

Perhaps the most prevalent type of duplicate content from Shopify is the product URL. Itโ€™s also potentially the offender that could cause the worst effects on SEO, if not resolved.

This happens due to collections pages, where they make duplicate content (focused on the product within the category) that matches the original product page.

For example, you might see something like this when clicking on a product from a collection page:

  • example.com/collections/mens/products/theproductname

Thatโ€™s Shopify generating a new URL for when the item is placed within a collection list.

Yet, thatโ€™s obviously different from the original product page you may have created:

  • example.com/products/theproductname
the products URL in Shopify - fix Shopify duplicate content

Once again, the URLs are unique, but the content delivered is exactly the same.

How to Fix Duplicate Content from Product URLs

The solution to this one is simple, and it all happens by modifying the theme files:

  1. In Shopify, go to Online Store > Themes.
  2. Choose the Actions option, then go to Edit Code.
  3. Search for and open the Snippets file.
  4. Pick the product-grid-item-liquid file within that folder.

While inside that file, change this:

<a href=โ€{{ product.url | within: current_collection }}โ€ class=โ€product-grid-itemโ€>

To this:

<a href=โ€{{ product.url }}โ€ class=โ€product-grid-itemโ€>

Whatโ€™s great about this code adjustment is that it doesnโ€™t just delete the duplicates; rather, it changes the duplicate pages to have the correct URL, essentially merging the multiple pages into one.

Our Conclusion

Duplicate content may occur due to a variety of reasons while working in Shopify.

The most common instances of duplicate content on Shopify are:

  • Shopify tags
  • Category pages
  • Product URLs

Having said that, you may encounter other areas of Shopify where the platform generates a copy of a regular webpage or blog post. Itโ€™s also possible (perhaps more common) for you to manually duplicate pieces of content in Shopify, particularly when working with products; you may have several versions of products or run dozens of landing pages for the exact same product. In that case, itโ€™s wise to make them as unique as possible, or go through the actions to eliminate duplicate content altogether.

Google, and other search engines, definitely tend to frown upon duplicate content, but they also know that duplicate content is inevitable, often required. So, you shouldnโ€™t overly worry about duplicate content. Simply put a reasonable amount of effort to remove the worst offenders (the ones outlined in this article), and then move on to spend more time working on the rest of your business.

Are you experiencing issues when learning how to fix Shopify duplicate content? Share your thoughts or concerns in the comments below!

Joe Warnimont

Joe Warnimont is a Chicago-based writer who focuses on eCommerce tools, WordPress, and social media. When not fishing or practicing yoga, he's collecting stamps at national parks (even though that's mainly for children). Check out Joe's portfolio to contact him and view past work.

Comments 0 Responses

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Rating *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Try Shopify for 3 months with $1/month!