Duplicate title tags

[Publican]

In my google webmaster account I am getting one Duplicate title tags error. I have looked and I cant see why, below are the duplicate links

http://vineyardwine.co.uk/Wine-Countries/Palacio-Rojo-Gran-Reserva-75cl?limit=100
http://vineyardwine.co.uk/palacio-rojo-gran-reserva-75cl

I have look at both of these but I cant see anything, I have a canonical link on both pages and I always have?

<link href="http://vineyardwine.co.uk/palacio-rojo-gran-reserva-75cl" rel="canonical" />

 

[UseYourWeb]

If it's only one page then it would be highly unlikely to effect your rankings. One way round it would be to append the category to the title tag giving both pages a different title but as theres a canonical link, the only thing this would help with is ocd tendencies and keeping the webmaster tools stats all looking nice
The numbers reported through webmaster tools are not exactly accurate or up to date, they're still a very good indication of how google see's your site but things like this are not uncommon and unless there are loads of them then it's nothing to really worry about (1 or 2) especially when using canonicals aswell

 

[yottacom]

If it's only one page then it would be highly unlikely to effect your rankings. One way round it would be to append the category to the title tag giving both pages a different title but as theres a canonical link, the only thing this would help with is ocd tendencies and keeping the webmaster tools stats all looking nice
The numbers reported through webmaster tools are not exactly accurate or up to date, they're still a very good indication of how google see's your site but things like this are not uncommon and unless there are loads of them then it's nothing to really worry about (1 or 2) especially when using canonicals aswell

i disagree, the titles are duplicated.

that's one title:
<title>Palacio Rojo Gran Reserva 75cl | Vineyard Wine</title>
and this one is the other one
<title>Palacio Rojo Gran Reserva 75cl | Vineyard Wine</title>

The "html improvement" message from Webmaster tools is just pointing out that.

The real issue it's way worse: the web architecture has not been well planned.

This is happening because the website offers a totale of 97 wines which have been over-categorized in 38 categories.

Duplications are bound to happen especially if the are categories which hold only one (or less) wine.

Let's try to remember that the canonical is only a suggestion, it's not a "strong" directive. Google may decide to ignore it entirely.

My advice to OP is to increase the type of wines or reduce the categories.

 

[UKSBD]

My advice to OP is to increase the type of wines or reduce the categories.

It's not so much there are too many categories, it's that they don't point to the same end page.

It would be better point to the same end page whether the bottle it is in a country, brand, region, grape, etc.

 

[Publican]

Ok, I have been getting no where with my ranking so maybe this could be part of the reason. I was looking at www.majestic.co.uk and they have there wines in the same sort of category structure as mine, as do most if not all wine sites. Wines fall into numerous category's. They use the canonical tag as well but I did notice like UKSBD said there wines are in different categories but they all point to the same end page.

My problem is am using opencart and I don't know how to do this or even if this can be done in opencart.

 

[pickaweb]

It is super important to go through each of those pages and change title tag and description for each of them.
Each page of your site should have unique content with unique title and description.
Until you fix that you will get alerts in Google Webmaster Tools

 

[Publican]

Yes but google webmasters tools is only picking up duplication on one of my products and I have nearly 90 products that are all in maybe 5 or 6 different category's and there not showing up because I use the canonical tag. Are you all telling me that the canonical tag doesn't do what Google them self's say it should? Or it only works in certain situations?

 

[UKSBD]

The duplicate title is irrelevant if you just set one end page.

Simple way of doing it is here - http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?t=39477
It does effect breadcrumb links though and means editing a core file.

Note though: It doesn't actually remove the other pages, just breaks all the links to them

 

[StevePoster]

Regarding the duplicated titles Google will only confused about your website and cannot be trusted. Google wants to show reliable sources to the users not with untrusted websites.

 

[johnzakaria]

Try to make every title unique as you can

 

[Glenn Rodgers]

Create meaningful and unique title per page regarding to the flavor of your website and add canonical coding on each pages of your website to avoid content duplication issue

 

[JoeInTheMiddle]

You could noindex or robots.txt the category pages?