Duplicate URLs Issue /public

Hi everyone,

I’m running a website built with Laravel in production, but I’m facing an issue with duplicate URLs. For example, my main URL is:

shoes.com/black
But the server also generates an additional URL with /public includeed:
shoes.com/public/black

The problem is that Google has indexed both versions (shoes.com/black and shoes.com/public/black), which is causing duplicate content issues. I understand that the root cause is likely related to server configuration, where /public shouldn’t be exposed. However, the site is still live, and I can’t make big changes to the server configuration just yet.

In the meantime, I’m considering using Google Search Console to manually deindex the /public URLs one by one. Would this be a reasonable temporary solution until I can properly configure the server and fix the issue?

If anyone has dealt with a similar situation, I’d appreciate your advice! Also, if you have recommendations on how to set up Laravel in production to avoid exposing /public, feel free to share.

Thanks in advance!

You can set the irrelevant webpage to noindex; do you want a hand with this?

The GSC path is a great idea too.

CPANathan said:

You can set the irrelevant webpage to noindex; do you want a hand with this?

The GSC path is a great idea too.

Click to expand...

Sorry for the double post, I wouldn't do it to you, but I got curious and asked Claude...

That chat model is the best thing since sliced bread for help and advice with code.

what are you using for hosting ? CPanel ? if so then you probably need to configure the .htaccess file

Usually, you have to set canonical tags pointing to the main pages (without /public),
As well as blocking Google bots from crawling them (using robots.txt),
Or/and redirect the URLs to the main pages as pointed out by @Amar neche,

Since the URLs are already indexed, blocking them won't be ideal, as it will cause errors when bots try to recrawl,
Set canonical tags pointing to the main pages, or find a way to get rid of them (404s, better if you can set 410s),

Or just block them from getting crawled (robots.txt), but bots will have to recrawl each a couple of times to drop them out of the index,
They'll be seen as errors (blocked), not as a critical problem, neither will be ideal