Joomla version: 2.5.7
Php version: 5.2.13
JoomSEF: 4.2.9

I have a multi language website, I'm finding out that the website is generating a awful lot of duplicate urls.

The url that are generating have the "id" and "itemid" of the main language (Italian) but they have another language parameter (German or English).

I checked out if somehow this url were linked from the website but nothing, I crawled many times with Xenu but this pages aren't linked from anywhere.

Can anyone help me out?

Hi,
First I'd suggest you to enable the URL Source Tracing in JoomSEF's Configuration on the Advanced tab and then deleting the URLs. When they're created again, the tracing information will be stored with them, so you can check where those URLs are coming from.

Thanks for the answer, I'm going to give it a try.

Hi! I have about the same problem. URL source tracing is activated but I think the problem is elsewhere in my case. Let's see this example. I'm in the panel "Manage SEF Url". In SEF Url column, I have two items en/faq.
1 - index.php?option=com_faqbook&lang=en&view=faqbook&Itemid=122
2 - index.php?option=com_faqbook&id=15&lang=en&view=category&Itemid=122

As you can see, both links are differents but all leads correctly to the right page. However, I do not want to have dupplicate so, I edited the first one (that has 30 hits instead of the second that has no hit at all) and, in the panel "aliases", I added the second link to merge all variations of the same link. I then deleted the "wrong" link (number 2).

I thought that would be fine. However, few days later, when I came back, the link was dupplicated again as seen above.

Maybe I did not understand correctly the purpose of the tab "aliases" but if so, how should I set it up?

Thank you!

Hi,

Aliases are used to 301 redirect one SEF URL to another. For more detailed information please see JoomSEF's documentation: www.artio.net/joomsef/documentation#aliases

If there are different non-SEF URLs, you can't prevent them from reappearing. But if both URLs display the same page, it's OK that they have the same SEF URL generated - otherwise they would be seen as a duplicate content.
So I'd suggest just to leave the duplicate as it is if your website is working correctly with it. Google will see only one en/faq URL for the same pages and that's correct.
Such duplicates appear when a component uses different URLs for the same page, which ideally shouldn't happen, but many Joomla components do this.

Ok. As we can provide apart the ItemId in the URL Manager, I thought at first that it would be logical to say that every variations of links for an ItemId will be taken in charge at once. The ItemId is unique and is related to a Menu Item. This menu item link to something (article, component, etc.) but is also unique at the end.

So, if I have this url:
index.php?option=com_content&catid=10&id=5&lang=fr&view=article&Itemid=129
redirected to:
fr/reparation-electromenager/mission

Wouldn't it be logical to catch also automatically:
index.php?option=com_content&catid=10&id=5&lang=fr&Itemid=129
or:
index.php?option=com_content&id=5&lang=fr&view=article&Itemid=129
or:
index.php?option=com_content&catid=10&lang=fr&view=article&Itemid=129
or even:
index.php?Itemid=122

or any other combinations. Even the language parameter should not cause any problem because there is a default language that could be used in these cases. This example above is not from an external component. It is a basic Joomla article.

Now, I'm talking about that because the URL Manager is kind of "polluted" by those extra urls and when I have to crawl into it, I have about a hundred URL to check in place of 20 something.