What if I point my canonicals to a URL version that is not used in internal links
-
My web developer has pointed the "good" URLs that I use in my internal link structure (top-nav/footer) to another duplicate version of my pages. Now the URLs that receive all the canonical link value are not the ones I use on my website. is this a problem and why???
In theory the implementation is good because both have equal content. But does it harm my link equity if it directs to a URL which is not included in my internal link architecture.
-
Thanks again. I hope Google will come out with some real guidelines on this subject. It saves us time arguing with third parties.
For now I will get the canonicals fixed.
-
I think Andy's absolutely right - I've seen too many situations where mixed signals caused crawl/index and even ranking problems. Ultimately, the canonical URL should be canonical in practice and used consistently. Otherwise the canonical tag is just a band-aid.
The other problem is that you naturally end up attracting links to your non-canonical URLs, because those are what people can see. Long-term, that compounds the situation.
Now, is it catastrophic? Unfortunately, that's really tough to say. I've seen situations where Google honored the canonical tag even without internal links and the site was ok. I just think it's a significant, unnecessary risk. Unfortunately, like Andy, I don't know of any clear documentation on the subject.
-
It certainly can't hurt. You might get someone pointing you to documentation relating to this exact problem
Andy
-
I don't know of anything that will explicitly tell you not to do this, but you can find lots of general information here:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
Andy
-
Allright, maybe a good question for the Google Webmaster Help Forum right?
-
Hi Andy,
I agree, it does not seem like a logical solution. Do you know of any documentation on this, maybe even from Google? I would like to give some guidelines to my web developer based on a source.
-
Quite honestly, I would never use a canonical to point to a page that no-one can navigate to. If I were Google, I would look at this and wonder if it was a recommended page, why then was this not the one people can just click on.
Andy
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
-
In writing the url, it is better to use the language used by the people of my country or English?
We speak Persian and all people search in Persian on Google. But I read in some sources that the url should be in English. Please tell me which language to use for url writing?
Technical SEO | | ghesta
For example, I brought down two models: 1fb0e134-10dc-4737-904f-bfdf07143a98-image.png https://ghesta.ir/blog/how-to-become-rich/
2)https://ghesta.ir/blog/چگونه-پولدار-شویم/0 -
Can google bots read my internal post links if they are all listed in a javascript accordian where I list my sources?
I post a JavaScript accordion drop down tab [ a collapsible content area ] at the end of all my posts. I labeled the accordion "Show Article Sources"., and when a user clicks it, then the accordion expands open and it shows all the sources I listed for my article. And this is where I post all of my articles links that I reference per each article. But I read somewhere that google crawlers can not read text in a drop down JavaScript tab. So I am wondering now if this is true because that would mean I have no internal linking SEO going on since it cant read the links? ..... if it is true, then I should remove the accordion from all my articles and some how include the links I reference in the actual body text so I can get SEO benefits from external linking similar content? If that's true, what is an aesthetic way to do this, any example links? Tips ? Thoughts ?
Technical SEO | | ianizaguirre0 -
My site was hacked and spammy URLs were injected that pointed out. The issue was fixed, but GWT is still reporting more of these links.
Excuse me for posting this here, I wasn't having much luck going through GWT support. We recently moved our eCommerce site to a new server and in the process the site was hacked. Spammy URLs were injected in, all of which were pointing outwards to some spammy eCommerce retail stores. I removed ~4,000 of these links, but more continue to pile in. As you can see, there are now over 20,000 of these links. Note that our server support team does not see these links anywhere. I understand that Google doesn't generally view this as a problem. But is that true given my circumstance? I cannot imagine that 20,000 new, senseless 404's can be healthy for my website. If I can't get a good response here, would anyone know of a direct Google support email or number I can use for this issue?
Technical SEO | | jampaper0 -
Backlink Profile: Should I disavow these links? Auto-Generated Links etc
Hello Moz Community, At first I wanted to say that I really like the Q&A section and that I read and learned a lot - and today it is time for my first own question 😉 I checked our backlink-profile these days and I found in my opinion a few bad/spammy links, most of them are auto-generated by pickung up some (meta) information from our webpage. Now my question is if I should dasavow these links over webmasters or if these links shouldn't matter as I guess basically every webpage will be picked up from them. Especially from the perspective that our rankings dropped significantly last weeks, but I am not sure if this can be the real reason. Examples are pages like: https://www.askives.com/ -Auto-Generates for example meta descriptions with links http://www.websitesalike.com/ -find similar websites http://mashrom.ir/ -no idea about this, really crazy Or we are at http://www.europages.com/, which makes sense for me and we get some referral traffic as well, but they auto-generated links from all their TLDs like .gr / .it / .cn etc. -just disavow all other TLDs than .com? Another example would be links from OM services like: seoprofiler.com Moreover we have a lot of links from different HR portals (including really many outdated job postings). Can these links “hurt” as well? Thanks a lot for your help! Greez Heiko
Technical SEO | | _Heiko_0 -
Quality links are beneficial, but are neutral links detrimental?
So obviously a link profile featuring quality / authoritative / relavant in-bound links is preferable, but here's my question: If I'm starting work on a brand new domain, should I build links that one would consider neutral (i.e. from a non-spammy, but unrelated site) or should I not bother and only focus on quality links? Thanks
Technical SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Canonical Link Quesiton
I wrote an article that is a page article, but would also be a very good blog post - So my question is two things: 1. If i post it as a static page and syndicate it as a blog post and have it as a canonical link to the page, google will read see the blog and read the page _url as the one with credit correct? In turn not dinging me for duplicate content. 2. Given if the above statement is correct, should I write the blog and put it on my static page referencing the blog or the way i have it as a static page with the blog using a canonical reference back to the page. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | tgr0ss0 -
Should Canonical be used if your site does not have any duplicate
Should canonical be used site wide even if my site is solid no duplicate content is generated. please explain your answer
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy0 -
Using a canonical tag to eliminate ID variables?
My research on seomoz has resulted in conflicting ideas regarding the canonical tag. One article says avoid it, the other says embrace it. We have fixed a majority of our architecture problems using redirects for duplicate content, however, when we send out newsletters we still have these pesky tracking ids. I figured out how to remove them from analytics, but am unsure of how this affects our SEO. An example of one of our links is: https://www.quicklearn.com/transcript/?utm_source=news101011&utm_medium=e&utm_campaign=newclass&nlid=news101011&UID=2287 The original url being www.quicklearn.com/transcript/ the custom (non-Google) variables being nlid and uid. Is this a problem? Do I need rel cononical tags on each and every page?
Technical SEO | | QuickLearnTraining0