Canonical - how can you tell if page is appearing duplicate in Google?
-
Our home page file is www.ides.com/default.asp and appears in Google as www.ides.com.
Would it be a good thing for us to include the following tag in the head section of our website homepage?
-
Note: You should make sure all the canonical versions of this render properly as well. This way - all links and 'juice' or value are passed the the domain name you specify.
Checking Google webmaster tools will also help see any errors when handling duplicate content issues (for homepage or entire site). as this was also a new feature in recent months added by Google.
Cheers!
-
i would 301 default.asp to "/"
i would also make sure that I sam not using default.asp in any of my internal links.
Its not really the best use of a canonical.
A canonical will not redirect the user, so he still sees the default.asp, can still copy the default.asp and create link pointing to the default.asp that will leak a bit of juice when it is meged by the canonical.
You lose a little link juice when it is 301ed also, but at least then you are unlikly to get any more links copied with the default.asp
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
-
Page disappears from Google search results
Hi, I recently encountered a very strange problem.
Technical SEO | | JoelssonMedia
One of the pages I published in my website ranked very well for a couple of days on top 5, then after a couple of days, the page completely vanished, no matter how direct I search for it, does not appear on the results, I check GSC, everything seems to be normal, but when checking Google analytics, I find it strange that there is no data on the page since it disappeared and it also does not show up on the 'active pages' section no matter how many different computers i keep it open. I have checked to page 9, and used a couple of keyword tools and it appears nowhere! It didn't have any back links, but it was unique and high quality. I have checked on the page does still exist and it is still readable. Has this ´happened to anyone before? Any thoughts would be gratefully received.0 -
Rel=Canonical For Landing Pages
We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created. We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale. The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Rel=canonical on landing page question
Currently we have two versions of a category page on our site (listed below) Version A: www.example.com/category • lives only in the SERPS but does not live on our site navigation • has links • user experience is not the best Version B: www.example.com/category?view=all • lives in our site navigation • has a rel=canonical to version A • very few links and doesn’t appear in the SERPS • user experience is better than version A Because the user experience of version B is better than version A I want to take out the rel=canonical in version B to version A and instead put a rel=canonical to version B in version A. If I do this will version B show up in the SERPS eventually and replace version A? If so, how long do you think this would take? Will this essentially pass page rank from version A to version B
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Duplicate Content on a Page Due to Responsive Version
What are the implications if a web designer codes the content of the site twice into the page in order to make the site responsive? I can't add the url I'm afraid but the H1 and the content appear twice in the code in order to produce both a responsive version and a desktop version. This is a Wordpress site. Is Google clever enough to distinguish between the 2 versions and treat them individually? Or will Google really think that the content has been repeated on the same page?
Technical SEO | | Wagada0 -
Container Page/Content Page Duplicate Content
My client has a container page on their website, they are using SiteFinity, so it is called a "group page", in which individual pages appear and can be scrolled through. When link are followed, they first lead to the group page URL, in which the first content page is shown. However, when navigating through the content pages, the URL changes. When navigating BACK to the first content page, the URL is that for the content page, but it appears to indexers as a duplicate of the group page, that is, the URL that appeared when first linking to the group page. The client updates this on the regular, so I need to find a solution that will allow them to add more pages, the new one always becoming the top page, without requiring extra coding. For instance, I had considered integrating REL=NEXT and REL=PREV, but they aren't going to keep that up to date.
Technical SEO | | SpokeHQ1 -
How can we get google to know we are a lifestyle magazine
hi, i have a website which is a lifestyle magazine www.in2town.co.uk before we had to build out site from scratch due to a major error from our hosting company we ranked number one for the word lifestyle magazine but since then we have always ranked number five. This week that has dropped to number seven and i would like to know, what do we need to do to let google know we are a lifestyle magazine. I am not sure what we need to do. i know we should have important keywords on the home page but i am not sure where to put these without making the site look silly. can anyone let me know if we should have an introduction and if so where shall we put this. we would really like to increase our page rank for lifestyle magazine but are struggling to know where to put text that will not make the site look silly. Also, can anyone let me know what other keywords we should be aiming for please; We are currently making major changes to our site to make it better.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Canonical tag in preferred and duplicate page
Hi, I have a super spiffy (not) CMS that tends to create some pages at the root level of the site (not where I want it) i.e. www.site.com/page.htm as well as the desired location i.e. www.site.com/category/keyword/page.htm . Now obviously a canonical tag inserted into the URL at the undesired location would be the best option, however the source code is exactly the same for both pages (can’t change this) i.e. if I put the canonical tag that reads www.site.com/category/keyword/page.htm"/> it will appear in the head section of both pages, the desired URL and the non desired URL. Will a canonical tag inserted into the head section of a the preferred URL directing the search engine spiders pretty much to itself cause more grieft than the solution it offers re duplicate content ? Marc
Technical SEO | | NRMA0 -
Canonical on ecommerce pages
I have seen some competitors using the nofollow tag as well as canonical on all refinements and sorts on their ecommerce pages. Example being if you went to their hard drive category page and refined by 500gb hard drives then that page would have a canonical element to send it back to hard drives page without the refinement. I see how this could be good for control indexation and the amount pages Google crawls, but do you see problems in using the canonical tag this way? Also I have seen competitors have category page descriptions (describing what that type of product is) on all pagenation and refinements (the exact same block of text on all of the pages). Would this be a duplicate content problem or is it not that big of a deal since the content is only on their site so they are only competiting with themselves. Thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | Gordian0