Theme creating thousands of duplicate sites
in Other
Hi, we aquired a client recently and encountered a very strange issue - the client's website is creating literally thousands (crawling by Screaming Frog SEO Spider, currently 140 thousand and counting) duplicate sites.
The website is https://prowiss.sk/
Do you know what could be the issue here? Thank you.
Comments
Hi,
Sorry, but we did not test this plugin with the theme. Our policy states that we do not support third-party plugins or custom code, so, unfortunately, we cannot help you.
Also, we cannot recommend any plugins other than the ones we support. You can find the list on this page, in the sidebar:
But I can recommend you the YOAST plugin. Many of our customers are using it, and they do not have issues with this plugin.
Thanks
Hi Phil, thank you for the answer. Unfortunately, we don't have a SEO problem, so your advice missed the point.
We have a problem with the website creating thousands duplicate pages. And it's not just the gallery pages. Also for example https://prowiss.sk/obce/ms-stonozka/-wordpress-theme/7758048?ref=muffingroup
7758048?ref=muffingroup is clearly a reference to you so there has to be some kind of a problem with the theme. Would you be willing to help us resolve the issue?
Thank you.
Please, turn off all of the plugins, refresh your permalinks, and check if this issue still appears.
This issue is probably because of your SEO plugin and that is why I suggested to try the YOAST instead.
Best regards
Hi Phil, thank you for the specification of the problem. I did as you said, deactivated every plugin and refreshed my permalinks.
I then crawled the site with Screaming Frog and again found several links that look like this
https://prowiss.sk/cennik/-wordpress-theme/7758048?ref=muffingroup
https://prowiss.sk/o-nas/-wordpress-theme/7758048?ref=muffingroup
https://prowiss.sk/ostatne/-wordpress-theme/7758048?ref=muffingroup
They return 404, but the original page without /-wordpress-theme/7758048?ref=muffingroup is working fine.
I installed Rank Math SEO plugin as an alternative to the previous All in one SEO. After setting it up, I refreshed the permalinks again and crawled the website again to come to the same conclusions so it seems that the SEO plugin wasn't the cause.
I now have all the plugins deactivated except Rank Math and Slider Revolution.
What could be causing the problem? What could I try next?
Thank you.
Please send us WordPress dashboard access privately thru the contact form, which is on the right side at http://themeforest.net/user/muffingroup#contact, and we will check what might be the reason.
Notice!
Please attach a link to this forum discussion.
Thanks
I could not find any corrupted links, as you showed before.
I searched for your website on Google, and there were no such links as well.
Can you tell me where do you take these links from?
Please, also try to use YOAST instead of Rank Math SEO. We used this plugin many times, and we had no problems with it.
Thanks
Hi Phil. Thanks for checking the page.
I crawl my page with Screaming Frog SEO Spider and it returns me these links.
Also Google Search Console crawls them, even tho it doesn't index, nor penalize, them, yet.
I will try Yoast, but I don't think it's SEO plugin's fault. Will let you know how it went.
Hi Phil.
It seems the real culprit was the cracked theme. After updating the theme and correctly registering it, crawling with Screaming Frog returned zero duplicate sites with weird parameters! :)
Thank you for your help.
I am glad that you resolved your issue. 😉
If you notice any other issues, please, let me know.
Thanks