URL contains repetitive elements

This means that the URL in question contains repetitive elements in the URL path.

Why is this important?

Repetitive elements in URL paths are usually caused when the crawler comes across links with relative URLs and the page doesn't have a base URL e.g. https://example.com/pages/pages/page1. They can be generated by Content Management Systems, plugins or broken HTML.

A common false positive for this Hint is dates in the path - these can normally be ignored e.g. https://example.com/2017/11/11/page-name

What does the Hint check?

This Hint will trigger for any internal URL which contains repeating paths.

Examples that trigger this Hint

The Hint would trigger for any URL with two or more paths with the same name, e.g. https://sitebulb.com/folder/folder/page

Why is this Hint marked 'Potential Issue'?

This Hint is a 'Potential Issue', which means that it is unlikely to be affecting the site at the moment, but should be investigated as it could cause issues in the future.

Repetitive paths in URLs could simply be a result of poor site design, or the URLs could have dates in the path as per the example above.

To establish whether this is an issue that warrants attention, you would need to understand why repetitive paths are ending up in the URLs. If it is the case that relative links are missing a base URL, then you would need to address this either by switching to absolute links or adding a base URL. If the problem is poor site design, then you may wish to re-evaluate the folder structure.