Views contextual filter pages and duplicate content?

Question

I just picked up a site that has its content represented by views pages with contextual filters instead of content pages, meaning that the content is available in two places. For instance, mysite.com/node/282 and also mysite.com/find-a-store/georgia/282-node-title. The pages that are utilized on the site and linked to via the main find-a-store page are the views ones, whereas the node pages seem to just sit there as sources for the view.

Is this a circumstance where there would be SEO penalties for having duplicate content? Will search engines even readily pick up on these views pages at all? Would it be better to change this so that the content is only available on the content page? I think it would be simpler to manage metatags/paths/redirects by using the content pages instead of views, as well.

Answer 1

For removing them from Google search, you could use the Metatag module https://www.drupal.org/project/metatag to mark nodes of that Content Type as noindex.

For internal Drupal search I suggest adding the Custom Search module https://www.drupal.org/project/custom_search You can use that to block searching of that Content Type.

Answer 2

Ended up just scrapping the views pages and using the content pages instead. Couldn't find a satisfactory answer to whether or not the views would actually be indexed.