Duplicate Title for HTML Sitemap pages

3dloco · August 19, 2011, 06:18:42 PM

Hello,

I am getting duplicate titleS for the HTML sitemap pages.
(HTML suggestions under Google Webmaster)
Is there a way to make each title unique (e.g. add a page number placeholder).

Below is what I currently have on the HTML template

Code Select

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
  <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
  <meta name="description" content="Sitemap">
  <meta name="keywords" content="Sitemap">
  <title>MySite Sitemap</title>
</head>

Thanks in advance for your help

Webhelpforums · August 20, 2011, 03:36:17 PM

You can not submit HTML sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Tools will show you duplicate page title warnings if Google's own crawler identified it when crawling your website. For a quick alternative to check sitewide duplicate titles/description/keywords check the duplication detection in A1 Website Analyzer

If you are creating HTML sitemaps using A1 Sitemap Generator, you can check this advanced HTML sitemaps article on how to select which way anchor text are generated.

3dloco · August 20, 2011, 09:52:09 PM

Hello,

Thanks for your response, but the Website Analyzer will not solve my issue because A1 sitemap generator is the one that is generating this HTML sitemap with the same Meta Title and Meta Description for all the pages in the sitemap (it is on my site and not submitted to Google, only crawled by Google) . The A1 HTML sitemap template has this hard-coded in there...so adding the page number to the template would resolve this issue.

I reviewed the advanced HTML sitemaps tutorial link you provided but I did not find a variable for the page number....these are the variables listed on the tutorial:

HTML Sitemap Template Variables

<%A1SG_ColsPerPage%> = columns per page
<%A1SG_LinksPerPage%> = links per page (estimate)
<%A1SG_LinksPerCol%> = links per column (estimate)

I tried a couple of variations with no luck...

<%A1SG_PageNumber%>
<%A1SG_Page%>
<%A1SG_Pg%>

Can you advise how to get the variable for the pages into the template.

Thanks,

3dloco

Webhelpforums · August 21, 2011, 09:06:23 AM

Concerning the duplicate title/description warnings in Google Webmaster Tools

If you get warnings in Google Webmaster Tools about duplicate titles/headers Google gets those *itself* from crawling your pages. A1 Sitemap Generator also extracts titles from your website in similar ways Google does. You will continue get those warnings even if you delete your HTML sitemap (!) The HTML sitemap is *not* the cause of those warnings.

Concerning the HTML sitemap:

When A1 Sitemap Generator creates HTML sitemaps, you can pick what it should use for anchor/link text for the various pages used in the generated HTML sitemap. Assuming you use 3.2.8, see "Create sitemap | HTML template code and options". In the options tab, see section "Items as linked descriptions". There you can pick if A1SG should use the title-tag of each page, or if it should generate the anchor/link text based in website structure. (Quick note: The meta descriptions is *not* used in HTML sitemaps. Only the page titles are for the anchor/link text in the HTML sitemap.)

Do note that if you have updated your website page titles, so they are unique:

* Google warnings will take some time to update (!)
* For page titles in HTML sitemap to be updated, you need to recreate it (again, updating the HTML sitemap will not affect what Google Webmaster Tools shows)

3dloco · August 21, 2011, 04:51:41 PM

Hello,

I think we are talking about two different Page Titles here and hence the confusion...the page titles that I am referring to is the page title of the html files (meta title) not the page title of the links for the page included in the sitemap that is displayed as anchor text.

What I am referring to is:

sitemap-page-1.html has meta title of <title>MySite - Sitemap</title>
sitemap-page-2.html has meta title of<title>MySite - Sitemap</title>
sitemap-page-#.html has meta title of <title>MySite - Sitemap</title>

What I think you are referring to is this:

sitemap-page-1.html

- Page Title for Link 1
- Page Title for Link 2
- Page Title for Link 3... and so forth

Does this make sense? What I need is to change the <title>MySite - Sitemap</title> that is part of the <head> on the html file...and the meta description too.

Therefore, adding the page number (or any unique number for each page) will make it unique. So...Can you advise how to get the variable for the pages into the template?

Thanks,

3dloco

Webhelpforums · August 21, 2011, 05:58:28 PM

I understand now. Yes that was our misunderstanding. Sorry for being slow!

Your suggestion makes much more sense to me now

I think 3.2.9 will have a fix for this implemented.

3dloco · August 21, 2011, 07:20:48 PM

Grreat! Thanks I will look out for the update.

Webhelpforums · August 24, 2011, 10:09:04 PM

Seems it is up now

Title is now set in sitemap template code like this:
<title>Sitemap<%A1SG_SitemapPageNumber%></title>

For multi-page visual HTML/CSS sitemaps the new instruction insert a space + number.

Duplicate Title for HTML Sitemap pages

More About Our Webmaster Tools for Windows and Mac