Duplicate Users

[cajkan]

Hello VL,

I was looking into GWT ( Google Webmaster Tools ), and into HTML improvements there are duplicate titles, descriptions etc...

Example if same user register twice and all his information is counted as duplicate content.
Now what would be the best solution for this to fix:

1. Delete one of the usernames
2. Set status inactive

Thank you very much

 

[Mark]

the *best* way to handle that is to keep only 1 user account and delete the rest.

so lets say you have

yoursite.com/details/mark
and
yoursite.com/details/marka12

remove whichever one is least active or no link code installed, then create a 301 redirect in your .htaccess redirecting the duplicate page to the correct one.

for example:

Redirect 301 /details/marka12/ http://www.yoursite.com/details/mark/

make sure you are deleting the correct user, you can verify by looking at the members page and seeing what link code he has installed, and/or by looking at their statistics.

 

[cajkan]

Well do i have to create 301 redirect for all pages? Because this list might be long as time passes.

So google knows that i have 2 same pages, and if i delete the page, with 301 im telling that this has been fixed right ?

And thanks for the information

 

[Mark]

Well do i have to create 301 redirect for all pages? Because this list might be long as time passes.

well you really shouldn't see too many duplicate submissions from legit users especially since VL checks for duplicate URL's on joining. It should be safe to remove the 301 redirect once its been dropped from Google index and you confirmed no other links are pointing to that URL, though i must admit i have never seen anyone with the need to do this.

So google knows that i have 2 same pages, and if i delete the page, with 301 im telling that this has been fixed right ?
And thanks for the information

by giving them a 301 redirect google knows the correct URL and will drop the duplicate URL's from their index.