Canonical Confusion
-
Hey guys,
I'm having a hard time grasping canonical links and the warnings I'm getting on my report card.
I'm using Yoast SEO Plug-In and can see that every page on my site has a canonical reference to the URL of the page I'm at.
Can someone please enlighten me on this subject. I'm reading everything I can about Canonicalization (honestly...an easier word please) but I does not make sense yet.
Thanks!
I added the notice I'm getting on my report card.
This is my domain http://bbguard.com.ve
-
Great! Thanks for the reply.
I'll get to it today.
F.
-
Yes I would say so. Choose one and go with it.
You can set your .htaccess file to redirect non www to www. If you can access a page with and without www then google will index both and issue you with a duplicate content warning.
-
From what I've been reading, search engines do consider those two to be the same URL (or at least do a good job at figuring that out).
Apparently they might be interpreted as different URLs. This adds to the confusion
From reading 3 articles and watching one video I have changed my understanding of this 4 times.
Can someone expand on this a bit further?
-
Ok, I see where I made a mistake:
I did the report card using http://www.bbguard.com.ve/ and it gave an error because the canonical is set up to be http://bbguard.com.ve
I just did the report card using http://bbguard.com.ve/ and it passed.
Is the www vs non www something I need to resolve?
-
Fabian
I need the url of the page this came from. When I looked at the site, every page I looked at had the canonical correct, but the first time I used mozbar on home page it did not show. When I inspected it, you had it in correctly. I went through 4 other pages and all show canonical is correct.
I then ran on page report card and, again all is well. If you ran it in a campaign, just give me the url of the page that is not correct.What it is saying usually means someone did something like inadvertently used the home page url for the canon on another, etc.
Best
Edit: here is On Page Report Card result for http://bbguard.com.ve/ attached as image.
There is no prob with the home page.
-
Only difference is see is that the page:
http://bbguard.com.veHas a rel value:
http://bbguard.com.ve/In the eyes of a search engine I am not sure that these URLs are identical. I would make them match exactly.
Are you only having this problem for the home page or are you getting warnings for other pages?
Best regards,
Rasmus
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
-
How to choose the best canonical URL
In a duplicate content situation, and assuming that both rel=canonical and a 301 redirect pass link equity (I know there is still some speculation on this), how should you choose the "best" version of the URL to establish as the redirect target or authoritative URL? For example, we have a series of duplicate pages on our site. Typically we choose the "cleanest" or shortest non-trailing-slash version of the URL as the canonical, but what if those pages are already established and have varying page authority/backlink profiles? The URLs are: example.com/stores/locate/index?parameters=tags - PA = 54, Inbound Links = 259 example.com/stores/locate/index - PA = 60, Inbound Links = 302 example.com/stores/ - This is the version that currently ranks. PA = 42, Inbound Links = 3 example.com/stores - PA = 40, Inbound Links = 8 This might not really even matter, but in the interests of conserving as much SEO value as possible, which would you choose as either the 301 redirect target and/or the canonical version? My gut is to go with the URL that's already ranking (example.com/stores/) but curious if PA, backlinks, and trailing slashes should be considered also. We of course would not 301 the URL with the tracking parameters. 🙂 Thanks for your help!
Moz Pro | | Critical_Mass0 -
Duplicate Page Content, Indexing and Rel Canonical Just DOUBLED! Need Advice to Fix
Last Friday (Penguin 5/2.1) my website shot way off the grid and I noticed in my MOZ PRO Campaign dashboard that all of the following just doubled in numbers on my website: duplicate page content, Google indexing, and rel canonicals. I also noticed that some of my pages, images, tags and categories now added a /page/2/ or a -2. I just changed noindex for tags, but indexing for media, pages, posts, and categories. I'm currently using All In One SEO for a plugin. Any advice would be much appreciated as I'm stuck on the issue. relconical.png Duplicate-Page-Content.png [Duplicate Content II](Duplicate Content II) index1.png
Moz Pro | | CelebrityPersonalTrainer0 -
Duplicate titles reported with canonical
Hi Mozzers, In the reports it is saying that I have some duplicate content and titles even though there is a canonical tag on them, is anyone else getting this?
Moz Pro | | KarlBantleman0 -
Rank Tracker Showing Confused me in Position ?
I recently checked one keyword ranking and it was showing my keyword is in 10th position of google.com but the same when i check directly on google.com i seen my keyword position is 16th so i again refresh the ranking and again it is still showing 10th position.. i am totally confused here which one is right.. please help here is the screenshot of that keyword so you can guys check from your side..
Moz Pro | | xplodeguru0 -
I have a Rel Canonical "notice" in my Crawl Diagnostics report. I'm presuming that means that the spider has detected a rel canonical tag and it is working as opposed to warning about an issue, is this correct?
I know this seems like a really dumb question but the site I'm working on is a BigCommerce one and I've been concerned about canonicalisation issues prior to receiving this report (I'm a SEOmoz pro newbie also!) and I just want to be clear I am reading this notice correctly. I presume this means that the site crawl has detected the rel canonical tag on these pages and it is working correctly. Is this correct?? Any input is much appreciated. Thanks
Moz Pro | | seanpearse0 -
Duplicate page content showing up with proper use of canonical tag
Hi, In the Crawl diagnostics reports, I'm getting lots of duplicate errors warnings e.g. duplicate page title. In most cases these are tracking urls and the page has a canonical tag pointing to the original page. It would be helpful if the crawl analysis reports could separate these out from ones that are of genuine concern. It can also happen when there's a noindex tag on a page. Thanks, Leigh
Moz Pro | | Leighm0 -
Duplicate content & canonicals
Hi, Working on a website for a company that works in different european countries. The setup is like this: www.website.eu/nl
Moz Pro | | nvs.nim
www.website.eu/be
www.website.eu/fr
... You see that every country has it's own subdir, but NL & BE share the same language, dutch... The copywriter wrote some unique content for NL and for BE, but it isn't possible to write unique for every product detail page because it's pretty technical stuff that goes into those pages. Now we want to add canonical tags to those identical product pages. Do we point the canonical on the /be products to /nl products or visa versa? Other question regarding SEOmoz: If we add canonical tags to x-pages, do they still appear in the Crawl Errors "duplicate page content", or do we have to do our own math and just do "duplicate page content" minus "Rel canonical" ?0 -
Backlink confusion
I've gotten confused when it comes to the Competitive Analysis Report in the Web App. I track in my own spreadsheet how many backlinks I accumulate. However, I had thought that the Competitive Analysis report would do that as well. But each month, the numbers of Total LInks- through Linking c-blocks changes up and down drastically. I clicked HELP to try and understand what each of these means, but could you please explain them to me? I was under the impression that External Followed Links are the ones I was going after, however, shouldn't my records match with the one in the web app? Somehow I went from 786 ext followed links in January, to 867 in Feb, to 804 in March, to 804 in April, then 973 in May, and dropped to 791 2 weeks later...I don't think I'm understanding how the web app calculates these numbers. And how come Domain Authority seems to fluctuate up and down? So what would be the best way to track my progress in accumulating backlinks? Would it be my own spreadsheet or do you have a tool for this? Because I'd like to see how many I've gotten since January, but don't understand how to see this in the webapp. HELP!
Moz Pro | | aircyclemegan0
