Is having "rel=canonical" on the same page it is pointing to going to hurt search?
-
i like the rel=canonical tag and i've seen matt cutts posts on google about this tag. for the site i'm working on, it's a great workaround because we often have two identical or nearly identical versions of pages: 1 for patients, 1 for doctors.
the problem is this: the way our content management system is set up, certain pages are linked up in a number of places and when we publish, two different versions of the page are created, but same content. because they are both being made from the same content templates, if i put in the rel=canonical tag, both pages get it. so, if i have:
http://www.myhospital.com/patient-condition.asp and http://www.myhospital.com/professional-condition.asp and they are both produced from the same template, and have the same content, and i'm trying to point search at http://www.myhospital.com/patient-condition.asp, but that tag appears on both pages
similarly, we have various forms and we like to know where people are coming from on the site to use those forms. to the bots, it looks like there's 600 versions of particular pages, so again, rel=canonical is great. however, because it's actually all the same page, just a link with a variable tacked on (http://www.myhospital.com/makeanappointment.asp?id=211) the rel=canonical tag will appear on "all" of them.
any insight is most appreciated!
thanks! brett
-
Yes
-
Got it. Dr.Pete have done excellent work on similar blog post. Right?
-
So, Does it really matter to add rel=canonical tag in each pages? Can I remove from web page?
It does matter, and you should not remove the canonical tag.
One example on the page you referenced is the following URL: http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/umbrella-stands?dir=asc&order=name
On the page you referenced visitors can change the default ORDER BY Position to ORDER BY Name (as an example) which changes the URL. Both pages are the same content but displayed different, which is exactly the type of issue canonicalization is designed to correct.
-
I am not getting clear idea by this answer. I am searching solution which may help me to solve same question.
I would like to share my URL.
http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/umbrella-stands
This page have rel=canonical tag for same page as follow.
<link rel="canonical" href="[http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/umbrella-stands](view-source:http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/umbrella-stands)" />
Website does not contain any duplicate page which is associated to this page. So, Does it really matter to add rel=canonical tag in each pages? Can I remove from web page?
-
Hi Brett.
Steven is correct. I think it will be helpful if I offer a bit more clarification.
www.myhospital.com/patient-condition.asp
www.myhopsital.com/professional-condition.asp
www.myhospital.com/patient-condition.asp?id=1
Those three URLs may point to the exact same page or very similar pages. Google simply wont index all 3 pages as it does not offer any user benefit. The best thing to do is tell Google which of these 3 pages is the primary page you wish listed. By placing the same canonical tag on all 3 pages, you are indicating to Google which page you wish listed.
With the above tag placed in all 3 pages, then Google knows in the first URL example they are dealing with the original page, and in the next 2 examples they are dealing with a copy.
NOTE: I am unsure why two users disliked this reply. It is correct. If I were to stretch, I can add that Bing stated their preference the canonical tag not used on a page who's URL matches the canonical, but they seem to handle it well with no issues.
-
With rel='canonical' you want to point all existing pages that have the same content to 1 page. Having a rel='canonical' on the page with itself as the href will not hurt, can only help verify that it is the preferred page.
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
-
Organic search traffic stats "leaking" into other channels?
Hi Everyone I have a website and am slowly getting to grips with SEO. Last week I enabled a new channel in google analytics which was "email" so I could track effectiveness of the weekly emails we send out. The good news is that a ton of traffic is now being assigned to the email "channel" in GA but my organic search traffic in channels is now down week on week. That feels odd as my overall traffic to the site is up, week on week. Does anyone have any experience of new channels coming on stream and canniballising old ones? Could it be that some of the traffic associated to organic search previously was actually coming from my email, I just didn't know it? thanks all!
Technical SEO | | NappyValleyNet1 -
Duplicate content with "no results found" search result pages
We have a motorcycle classifieds section that lets users search for motorcycles for sale using various drop down menus to pick year-make-type-model-trim, etc.. These search results create urls such as:
Technical SEO | | seoninjaz
www.example.com/classifieds/search.php?vehicle_manufacturer=Triumph&vehicle_category=On-Off Road&vehicle_model=Tiger&vehicle_trim=800 XC ABS We understand that all of these URL varieties are considered unique URLs by Google. The issue is that we are getting duplicate content errors on the pages that have no results as they have no content to distinguish themselves from each other. A URL like:
www.example.com/classifieds/search.php?vehicle_manufacturer=Triumph&vehicle_category=Sportbike
and
www.example.com/classifieds/search.php?vehicle_manufacturer=Honda&vehicle_category=Streetbike Will have a results page that says "0 results found". I'm wondering how we can distinguish these "unique" pages better? Some thoughts:
-make sure <title>reflects what was search<br />-add a heading that may say "0 results found for Triumph On-Off Road Tiger 800 XC ABS"<br /><br />Can anyone please help out and lend some ideas in solving this? <br /><br />Thank you.</p></title>0 -
Rel=canonical issue
Re. http://www.appetise.com. We have been alerted that we are "not making appropriate use of the rel=canonical tag". Please could someone just clarify this for us and let us know the recommended remedial action we need to take to rectify the issue? Many Thanks, RB
Technical SEO | | E-resistible0 -
Warnings on Pages excluded from Search Engines
I am new to this, so my question may seem a little rookie type... When looking at my crawl diagnostic errors there are 1604 warnings for "302 redirects". Of those 1604 warnings 1500 of them are for the same page with different product ID's on them such as: www.soccerstop.com/EMailproduct.aspx?productid=999
Technical SEO | | SoccerStop
www.soccerstop.com/EMailproduct.aspx?productid=998 In our robots.txt file we have Disallow: /emailproduct.aspx Wouldn't that take care of this problem? If so, why is it still giving me these warning errors? It does take into account our robots.txt file when generating this report does it not? Thanks for any help you can provide.
James0 -
How do I get rid of irrelevant back links pointing to missing pages on my site
Hi all, My site was hacked about a year ago and as a result I now have a ton of back links from irrelevant sites pointing to pages on my site that no longer exist. The followed back links section on the Competitive domain analysis tool shows about 3 pages worth of these horrible links. I have 2 questions: how bad is this for my site's SEO (which isn't good anyway, Page Rank 0) and how do I get rid of them? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks, Andy WkXz0
Technical SEO | | getzen560 -
Why am i still getting duplicate page title warnings after implementing canonical URLS?
Hi there, i'm having some trouble understanding why I'm still getting duplicate page title warnings on pages that have the rel=canonical attribute. For example: this page is the relative url http://www.resnet.us/directory/auditor/az/89/home-energy-raters-hers-raters/1 and http://www.resnet.us/directory/auditor/az/89/home-energy-raters-hers-raters/2 is the second page of this parsed list which is linking back to the first page using rel=canonical. i have over 300 pages like this!! what should i do SEOmoz GURUS? how do i remedy this problem? is it a problem?
Technical SEO | | fourthdimensioninc0 -
"/" at the end of a URL
I just noticed that I have the exact same page showing up separately in my Google Analytics reports. One has a "/" at the end and the other does not. Otherwise, these are the exact same URL's. Is this something I need to be aware of from a duplicate content perspective? If so, how do I go about fixing this? I thought the SE's would automatically see that a URL with a "/" at the end is the same as one without, but if that is the case, why is it showing up in my reports as two separate pages?
Technical SEO | | Blockinc0 -
What should i do with the links for "Login", "Register", "My Trolley" links on every page.
My website ommrudraksha has 3 links on every page. 1. Login 2. Register 3. My trolley My doubt is i do not want to give any weightage to these links. does these links will be calculated when page links are calculated ? Should i remove these as links and place these as buttons ? ( with look a like of link visually ? )
Technical SEO | | Ommrudraksha0