Where to point Rel = Canonical?
-
I have a client who is using the rel=canonical tag across their e-commerce site. Here is an example of how it is set up.
URLs
1. http://www.beautybrands.com/category/makeup/face/bronzer.do?nType=22. http://www.beautybrands.com/category/makeup/face/bronzer.doThe canonical tag points to the second URL. Both pages are indexed by Google.The first page has a higher page authority (most of the internal site links go to the first URL) than the second one. Should the page with the highest authority be the one that the canonical tag points to? Is there a better way to handle these situations? Does any authority get passed through the tag?Thanks!
-
Absolutely
-
Canonicals are fine, but you should always canonical the correct or main url. (The one being used in the navigation)
-
That canonical is fine - they're essentially saying that all those pages are the same content - applies to all "Sort By" filters too - better to have the 2 URLs consolidated into one in the SERPs
.. btw, what's with all the whitespace characters in the source code? :S
-
I would see if they could restructure their site so that the 2nd link was the actual link. (without type2). I don't see why they would have those parameters as the main category.
You really want the link architecture to flow with what your Canonical tags are saying.
-
This is fine. Nothing to worry about. The link juice does get passed onto the canonical URL. There's a slight loss, but it's sort of like a 301.
This tag helps you avoid any duplicate content issues.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Tool to check backlinks pointing to non-existing pages
Hi, Our website has many broken links/non-existing pages. But there might be many backlinks for such non-existing pages. We want to find-out all such backlinks pointing to our non-existing pages (404). All the tools I tried so far including Moz OSE have been listing only backlinks for current existing pages. So please guide me how to find the backlinks we are looking for. Thanks, Moz member
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Is it bad I have a cluster of canonical urls that 301 re-direct?
Just went through a migration. We have a group of canonical URLs that are NOT the preferred url, but 301 re-direct to the preferred URL. Does this essentially "break even" and the incorrect canonical URL becomes obsolete? And/or would this be considered potentially bad and confusing for bots?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
Using Canonical Attribute
Hi All, I am hoping you can help me? We have recently migrated to the Umbraco CMS and now have duplicate versions of the same page showing on different URLs. My understanding is that this is one of the major reasons for the rel=canonical tag. So am I right in saying that if I add the following to the page that I want to rank then this will work? I'm just a little worried as I have read some horror stories of people implementing this attribute incorrectly and getting into trouble. Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Creditsafe0 -
Use of Rel=Canonical
I have been pondering whether I am using this tag correctly or not. We have a custom solution which lays out products in the typical eCommerce style with plenty of tick box filters to further narrow down the view. When I last researched this it seemed like a good idea to implement rel=canonical to point all sub section pages at a 'view-all' page which returns all the products unfiltered for that given section. Normally pages are restricted down to 9 results per page with interface options to increase that. This combined with all the filters we offer creates many millions of possible page permutations and hence the need for the Canonical tag. I am concerned because our view-all pages get large, returning all of that section's product into one place.If I pointed the view-all page at say the first page of x results would that defeat the object of the view-all suggestion that Google made a few years back as it would require further crawling to get at all the data? Alternatively as these pages are just product listings, would NoIndex be a better route to go given that its unlikely they will get much love in Google anyway?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | motiv80 -
Canonical tag: how to deal with product variations in the music industry?
Hello here. I own a music publishing company: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ And we have several similar items which only difference is the instrument they have been written for. For example, look at the two item pages below: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/Canon2Vl.html http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/Canon2Vla.html They are the exact same piece of music, but written in a different way to target 2 different instrumental combinations. If it wasn't for the user reviews that can make those two similar pages different, Google could see that as duplicate content. Am I correct? And if so, how do you suggest to tackle such a possible problem? Via canonical tags? How? To have a better idea of the magnitude of the problem, have a look at these search results on our site which give you product variations of basically the same piece of music, the only difference is in the targeted instruments: www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Canon+in+D www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Meditation www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Flight And, similarly, we have collections of pieces targeting different instruments: www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Wedding+Collection www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Christmas+Collection www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Halloween+Collection Any thoughts and suggestions to tackle this potential page duplication issue are very welcome! Thank you to anyone in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Real impact of canonical links?
I am responsible for 2 e-commerce websites. SEO Moz and Google Web Master tools both inform me regularly that on both sites there are many instances of duplicate titles, headings, decriptions and page content. Obviously from an SEO point of view I am more than a little concerned about this! Out product pages struggle to perform strongly despite the fact that our website is of a decent quality and we are leaders in our field. Our competitors rank above us when they add a product page, whereas we normal flit in between 8-10 or on the 2nd SERP. I know it is hard without viewing the site, but is duplicate content likely to be a strong, leading factor in this? I think it is, but want to put together a business case to spend the cash to sort it out....just need someone confirmation that this is worth sorting as a priority. Here are 2 examples of what I mean: 1) Category pages www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx We have filters on our category page (so the customer can sort products based on their price, colour, size etc.). When filters are used a new URL is generared. www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=0||10 www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1.aspx?prices=10||20 The content, titles, description is the same although the links are different. Do I need to set up a canonical tag on the page that reads: 2) Product pages Product pages on the websites have different URLs depending on how to arrive on them. You get 1 URL if you navigated to the page via the website navigation, but you get another different URL if you used the website search functionality to find the page. Example: Search link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/category1/Product1.aspx Navigation link: www.exampledomain.co.uk/12345/category1/Product1.aspx Again, do I need to set up a canonical tag for 1 of these link types so that the link benefit is not shared over 2 pages? Any feedback would be welcome! At the moment the ability to add canonical tags is locked down by our CMS (I know, rubbish!)...so website development would be needed - hence the need for a business case!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Help! Is rel cononical impacting me?
Hi there. My personal site www.adamlewis.info has higher Domain Authority and Moz rank and more linking domains than the top ranking site for my name "Adam Lewis" My landing page /adam-lewis has an A Grade. Yet I am still on page 2 behind what appear to be weaker domains. The on-site report says I am not making appropriate use of Rel Cononical. This is a bit techy for me. Can anyone explain how this might or might not be affecting my ranking for "adam lewis"? Thanks guys! Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adamlewis100 -
IP address being indexed by Google in addition to canonical domain.
Our site's IP address is being indexed in addition to the canonical www.example.com domain. As soon as it was flagged a 301 was implemented in the .htaccess file to redirect the IP address to the canonical. Does this usually occur? Is it detrimental to SEO? In my time in SEO I've never heard of this being an issue, or being part of a list of things to be checked. It sounds more like a server that wasn't configured correctly when hosting was set up? It didn't seem to be affecting the site at all, but is it more common and I've just never heard of it? 😛 Should it be something I'm usually looking for in future? Responses are greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mikeimrie0