Hi,

Google Webmasters is showing over 300 duplicate pages in my site, because for some reason Google is seeing my non-SEF urls.

How do I stop Google from seeing these non-SEF URLS?

Here is an eg: mydomain.co.za/index.php?option=com_k2&a...id=83&Itemid=101 is actually mydomain.co.za/an-article

Why is google seeing both and resulting duplicate content?

Hi,

If Google has the non-SEF URLs indexed, it takes quite some time (usually weeks) until it stops crawling them. Anyway, the non-SEF URLs should be correctly 301 redirected to their SEF equivalents, if the "Redirect nonSEF URLs to SEF?" option is enabled in JoomSEF's Configuration on the Advanced tab, so they shouldn't cause a duplicate content problem.

You're saying I must manually re-direct over 300 non-SEF URLs? Why did Google see them in the first place? Surely JoomSEF should have prevented this? If there is no option in JoomSEF to address this issue other than do it manually?

What about demoting the non-SEF URL's in Google Webmasters? Will that work?

Not manually, the non-SEF URL should be automatically redirected to correct SEF one, if you have the "Redirect nonSEF URLs to SEF" option enabled in JoomSEF's Configuration on the Advanced tab.

So your website wasn't indexed before you installed JoomSEF? In that case non-SEF URLs shouldn't get indexed by Google. Try checking the webmasters tools if you can find on which pages it found them and check those pages if they really contain the non-SEF URLs. Or just check your website's source code if the non-SEF URLs are present there somewhere.

Demoting non-SEF URLs probably won't help, as it only affects the Sitelinks, see: support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer...=en&answer=47334

Thanx for the feedback, I did check the "Redirect nonSEF URL's to SEF" option is in fact set to Yes already.

When I look at the pages in webmasters tools under 'Duplicate title tags' I see three duplicate title tags, each with about 5 pages that are the same.... here is one "Super User | Company Group of Spas | Gauteng & Western Cape"

Under that is a bunch of links like this:
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&Itemid=131&limitstart=10
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&Itemid=131&limitstart=50
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&limitstart=20
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&limitstart=30
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&limitstart=40
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42

Same here:
About the Group | Company Group of Spas | Gauteng & Western Cape
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=category&id=1&Itemid=115
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=category&id=16&Itemid=115
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&Itemid=115&limitstart=10
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&Itemid=115&limitstart=20
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&Itemid=115&limitstart=30
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&Itemid=115&limitstart=40
/?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=42&Itemid=115&limitstart=50

I don't know what is cause this? And why is Google seeing my non-SEF?

Thank you