Rel=canonical + no index
-
We have been doing an a/b test of our hp and although we placed a rel=canonical tag on the testing page it is still being indexed. In fact at one point google even had it showing as a sitelink . We have this problem through out our website. My question is:
What is the best practice for duplicate pages?
1. put only a rel= canonical pointing to the "wanted original page"
2. put a rel= canonical (pointing to the wanted original page) and a no index on the duplicate version
Has anyone seen any detrimental effect doing # 2?
Thanks
-
Interesting - I've very rarely had issues with GWO, but if a new URL was created and someone linked to it, I can see where you might have a problem.
(1) None of these things are absolute, I'm afraid, but typically, yes - a rel=canonical to a different page should keep the first page out of the index.
(2) Usually, but it depends. The problem here may be that Google just isn't crawling the test variant very often, so they may not be processing the rel=canonical yet.
If it's just a couple of pages, I'd give it time - it's probably not an emergency situation. Again, you could just tell Google to remove them in GWT. I think you're doing the right thing with the canonical tags, but it can take Google time to process them the way you want to, in practice.
-
To answer the second question :
We actually use google's website optimizer to run our test -- the problem started when someone linked to the test page....
Not sure if these scenarios are different for google -- but just trying to understand it
1. if a page was never indexed before and you put a rel= canonical on it (pointing to a different page) than the rel = canonical will keep it out of the index?
2. If a page was already in the index and you put on rel=canonical is that a strong enough signal for google to go and remove it from the index?
obviously both these scenarios are once the pages have been crawled
-
I wouldn't mix those signals - it's nearly impossible to tell what's working if you do. If the canonical on the test page isn't working, there may be a couple of issues:
(1) It could just be taking time. Honestly, it's never as fast as you want it to be.
(2) It may be that the test versions got crawled originally, but now aren't being crawled (on the canonical isn't being processed). Check the cache date on the test page.
The big question is how they got crawled in the first place. It's often better to use some sort of cookie-based implementation so that Google never even sees the B version. That's how most of the A/B test implementations work (specifically to avoid this problem).
If it's just a couple of URLs and you can't shake them, you could request manual removal in GWT. That really depends on the scope and URL structure, though.
-
Good point, i was thinking of robots.txt, where the page would not eb read.
But I have not thought about that situation. i am not sure what search engines would do.
But still, just the canonical is needed.
-
A page that has a no index on it still gets crawled and therefore the rel=canonical directive is still "seen" by the bot --- so why wouldn't the rel=canonical pass the credit over?
-
Just the rel canonical
if you no index the page, the rel canonical can not be indexed and can not work
Rel canonical simply passes the credit for the content to the canonical page.
no index is like cutting off your hand because you have a splinter. links pointing to a non indexed page are puring link juice into thin air.
You can use a mete noindex , follow so that some of the link juice is returned, but canonical is best for duplicate content.
Actualy getting rid of the duplicate content is best
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
-
Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?
Hello, We have magento 2 extensions website mageants.com since 1 years google every 15 days cached my all pages but suddenly last 15 days my websites pages not cached by google showing me 404 error so go search console check error but din't find any error so I have cached manually fetch and render but still most of pages have same 404 error example page : - https://www.mageants.com/free-gift-for-magento-2.html error :- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN803IN804&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1569j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 so have any one solutions for this issues
Technical SEO | | vikrantrathore0 -
Removing indexed pages
Hi all, this is my first post so be kind 🙂 - I have a one page Wordpress site that has the Yoast plugin installed. Unfortunately, when I first submitted the site's XML sitemap to the Google Search Console, I didn't check the Yoast settings and it submitted some example files from a theme demo I was using. These got indexed, which is a pain, so now I am trying to remove them. Originally I did a bunch of 301's but that didn't remove them from (at least not after about a month) - so now I have set up 410's - These also seem to not be working and I am wondering if it is because I re-submitted the sitemap with only the index page on it (as it is just a single page site) could that have now stopped Google indexing the original pages to actually see the 410's?
Technical SEO | | Jettynz
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.0 -
Can I canonical the same page?
I have a site where I have 500+ Page listing pages and I would like to rel=canonical them to the master page. Example: http://www.example.com//articles?p=18 OR http://www.example.com/articles?p=65 I plan on adding this to the section from of the page template so it goes to all pages - When I do this, I will also add the canonical to the page I am directing the canonical. Is this a bad thing? Or allowed?
Technical SEO | | JoshKimber0 -
Canonical tag problem
Hello I'm newbie here i dont know very well about seo but i would like to ask your help? I'm running report about my website and on report I dont have canonical tag on my products. But if i check from on page report link by link it shows that I have canonical tag. At the same time if i check my pages code i can see below canonical tag codes? Do we use canonical tags wrong? What can cause this different information? Could you please help me? Is it important to use canonical tag beginning or end? I'm using now trial version and trying to understand report is correct what is my mistakes. Thanks in advance My code is
Technical SEO | | FRUTIKO0 -
Incorrect rel canonical , impacts ?
Incorrect use of canonical code.. and why have they used the strange code surrounding it. Hi there seo guys, I need some help.. a site I am working on has used the rel canonical tag incorrectly. they have used the code on the cannon page not on the duplicate pages.. there is also some other strange code with it. I will show and hide the url.. However I wanted to know if this would stop google bots crawling this page correctly as they dont seem to rank very well either.. here is the code:
Technical SEO | | ibusmedia0 -
Index page
To the SEO experts, this may well seem a silly question, so I apologies in advance as I try not to ask questions that I probably know the answer for already, but clarity is my goal I have numerous sites ,as standard practice, through the .htaccess I will always set up non www to www, and redirect the index page to www.mysite.com. All straight forward, have never questioned this practice, always been advised its the ebst practice to avoid duplicate content. Now, today, I was looking at a CMS service for a customer for their website, the website is already built and its a static website, so the CMS integration was going to mean a full rewrite of the website. Speaking to a friend on another forum, he told me about a service called simple CMS, had a look, looks perfect for the customer ... Went to set it up on the clients site and here is the problem. For the CMS software to work, it MUST access the index page, because my index page is redirected to www.mysite.com , it wont work as it cant find the index page (obviously) I questioned this with the software company, they inform me that it must access the index page, I have explained that it wont be able to and why (cause I have my index page redirected to avoid duplicate content) To my astonishment, the person there told me that duplicate content is a huge no no with Google (that's not the astonishing part) but its not relevant to the index and non index page of a website. This goes against everything I thought I knew ... The person also reassured me that they have worked within the SEO area for 10 years. As I am a subscriber to SEO MOZ and no one here has anything to gain but offering advice, is this true ? Will it not be an issue for duplicate content to show both a index page and non index page ?, will search engines not view this as duplicate content ? Or is this SEO expert talking bull, which I suspect, but cannot be sure. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, it would make my life a lot easier for the customer to use this CMS software, but I would do it at the risk of tarnishing the work they and I have done on their ranking status Many thanks in advance John
Technical SEO | | Johnny4B0 -
301 or Rel=canonical
Should I use a 301 redirect for redirect mywebsite.com to www.mywebsite.com or use a rel=canonical?? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LeslieVS0 -
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
Technical SEO | | brett_hss0