Turns out the second listing (which was the dupe) ended with the URL: /?replytocom=22264. No idea what the heck that is all about however doing a quick Google Search to see how bad my problem was I did the following Google Search: Over 5000 results came back (oh great). Good news, the fix is very simple.
Recommended Fix
Adding a single line of code to the Robots.txt was the fastest and cleanest method I could think of to block search engines from indexing these dupe strings. Simply add the following line to the robots.txt file which should be sitting in the root of your wordpress site. I’m sure you could throw something into your .htaccess file to 301 redirect the traffic to the correct link however I find the update to the robots.txt file is clean and simple and doesn’t add any bloat to your site.
Option 2
For those of you who don’t want to mess with editing your robots.txt file (or don’t know how) then another option is to just install a plugin which I found that redirects BOTS to the correct URL. It is called the Replytcom Redirector WordPress Plugin. Just download, install and activate from the WordPress Plugin menu. Nothing to configure either once you install it. I updated my robots.txt file tonight so I’ll report back once I see the pages dropping from the Google Search Results so stay tuned. So apparently this setting was not being honored by the GoogleBot which is why I went the Robots.txt route. For others, perhaps it will work…?? Not sure. Thanks again. If ” ?replytocom ” already set to ignore in webmaster tools, then you have add second parameter “replytocom” also. For me, the second parameter caught the ?replytocom links (it shows sample links in my blog) You will definitely see the difference in 2 to 4 weeks. I hope this helps you. Glad to know that’s really you. Because one wrong guy left comment in my blog with your name. I’m not sure how my settings prevent the index of ?replytocom, but it works. I’m seeing the difference in your settings than mine. Here are the two screenshots. http://goo.gl/XcwfM http://goo.gl/yoFHM Hope this helps you and others. Comment Name * Email *
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