Rel="canonical" of .html/ to .html
-
Hi,
could you guys confirm me that the following scenario is completely senseless?
I just got the instruction from an external consultant (with quiet good SEO knowledge) to use a rel="canonical" for the following urls.
http://www.example.com/petra.html/
to
http://www.example.com/petra.htmlI mean a folder petra/ to petra is ok - but a trailing slash after .html ???
Apart from that I would rather choose a 301 - not a rel canonical.
What is your position here?
-
they probably made a mistake. .html is the filename, not a folder and therefor no trailing slash. I would ask them to clarify.
As a matter of fact I would even strip off the .html extension.
-
Hi Petra
That seems a bit weird to say the least.
I'm guessing that the consultant recommends the canonical tag to avoid a duplicate content issue with the two URLs?
Well, simply putting the canonical tag on petra.html should fix that, as it will tell Google not to index any other variant of this URL (be it with ? queries or / slashes).
Similarly, if you have links going to the petra.html/ page for whatever reason, I'd pop in a 301 redirect like you said.
Now, if they were two separate, but identical, pages that are designed to both exist for the user, the consultant would have a point. I would point a canonical on petra.html/ to petra.html, but I would actually put "noindex" and "nofollow" meta tags in the header of one of the pages first and foremost, as I believe this is more of a definitive signal.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Sudden decrease in indexed AMP pages after 8/1/16 update
After the AMP update on 8/1/16, the number of AMP pages indexed suddenly dropped by about 50% and it's crushing our search traffic- I haven't been able to find any documentation on any changes to look out for and why we are getting a penalty- any advice or something I should look out for?
Technical SEO | | nystromandy0 -
Http:// to https:// 301 or 302 redirect
I've read over the Q & A in the Community, but am wondering the reasoning behind this issue. I know - 301's are permanent and pass links, and 302s are temporary (due to cache) and don't pass links. But, I've run across two sites now that 302 redirect http:// to https://. Is there a valid reason behind this? From my POV and research, the redirect should 301 if it's permanent, but is there a larger issue I am missing?
Technical SEO | | FOTF_DigitalMarketing1 -
Webmaster Tools "Links to your site" history over time?
Is there a way to see a history of the "links to your site"? I've seen a lot of posts here from people say "I just saw a big drop in my numbers." I don't look at this number enough to be that familiar with it. Is there a way to see if Google has suddenly chopped our numbers? I've poked around a little, but not found a method yet. Thanks, Reeves
Technical SEO | | wreevesc0 -
Beginner - needs to better understand rel=canonical. What is the best resource?
I'm pretty sure I have pages/posts that are competing on the same keyword and would like to fix it. What is the best beginners guide to understanding rel=canonical and how to use it to improve our SEO?
Technical SEO | | JonnyBird10 -
Categories and rel canonical
Hello everyone, I have a doubt in how to approach this problem. I have a local business website, and i want to rank this website for our main KW. So the idea is to rank the main Keyword to the home page www.sitename.com At the same time we blog every week and one of the categories is the same has the main Keyword. It makes sense because the majority of the blog posts are about it. In a certain way the homepage and the category page are competing for the same keyword. How can i approach this problem? Should i use rel canonical in the category page, pointing to the homepage? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | Barbio0 -
Will rel canonical tags remove previously indexed URLs?
Hello, 7 days ago, we implemented canonical tags to resolve duplicate content issues that had been caused by URL parameters. These "duplicate content" had already been indexed. Now that the URLs have rel canonical tags in place, will Google automatically remove from its index the other URLs with the URL parameters? I ask because we have been tracking the approximate number of URLs indexed by doing a site: search in Google, and we have barely noticed a decrease in URLs indexed. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | yacpro130 -
Adding Rel Canonical to multiple pages
Hi, Our CMS generates a lot of duplicate content, (Different versions of every page for 3 different font sizes). There are many other reasons why we should drop this current CMS and go with something else, and we are in the process of doing that. But for now, does anyone know how would I do the following: I've created a spreadsheet that contains the following: Column 1: rel="canonical" tag for URL Column 2: Duplicate Content URL # 1 Column 3: Duplicate Content URL # 2 Column 4: Duplicate Content URL # 3 I want to add the tag from column 1 into the head of every page from column 2,3, and 4. What would be a fast way to do this considering that I have around 1800 rows. Check the screenshot of the builtwith.com result to see more information about the website if that helps. Farris bxySL
Technical SEO | | jdossetti0 -
Syndication: Link back vs. Rel Canonical
For content syndication, let's say I have the choice of (1) a link back or (2) a cross domain rel canonical to the original page, which one would you choose and why? (I'm trying to pick the best option to save dev time!) I'm also curious to know what would be the difference in SERPs between the link back & the canonical solution for the original publisher and for sydication partners? (I would prefer not having the syndication partners disappeared entirely from SERPs, I just want to make sure I'm first!) A side question: What's the difference in real life between the Google source attribution tag & the cross domain rel canonical tag? Thanks! PS: Don't know if it helps but note that we can syndicate 1 article to multiple syndication partners (It would't be impossible to see 1 article syndicated to 50 partners)
Technical SEO | | raywatson0