Can I use rel=canonical and then remove it?
-
Hi all!
I run a ticketing site and I am considering using rel=canonical temporary.
In Europe, when someone is looking for tickets for a soccer game, they look for them differently if the game is played in one city or in another city.
I.e.:
"liverpool arsenal tickets" - game played in the 1st leg in 2012
"arsenal liverpool tickets - game played in the 2nd leg in 2013
We have two different events, with two different unique texts but sometimes Google chooses the one in 2013 one before the closest one, especially for queries without dates or years.
I don't want to remove the second game from our site - exceptionally some people can broswer our website and buy tickets with months in advance.
So I am considering place a rel=canonical in the game played in 2013 poiting to the game played in a few weeks. After that, I would remove it.
Would that make any sense?
Thanks!
-
I would create a generic canonical "/tickets/liverpool_arsenal" which lists the upcoming games. I would create unique canonicals/titles with event information for each game.
Use a 302 to redirect to the most appropriate content (i.e. the upcoming game).
-
Just remember that rel canonical is a suggestion to Google rather than an order and can still be overlooked.
Have you thought about a 302 temporary redirect instead? This will guarantee the correct page is viewed.
Andy
-
Thanks for the answer Andy. We already have them But Google just chooses wronlgy sometimes. When the user add the date to the query, i.e.: "arsenal liverpool 2012 tickets" then the result is the right one. But for generic searches like: "arsenal liverpool tickets" Google sometimes picks the next event and some other times the one in 2013.
-
I would be tempted to look at adding some Schema.org metadata in there Jorge. You can setup dates and event specific information that will give you a new rich snippet result in Google - have a look at the Sports Events on Schema.org. This is what they are there for
Andy
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
-
Changing Url Removes Backlink
Hello MOZ Community, I have question regarding Bad Backlink Removal. My Site's Post's Image got 4 to 5k backlinks from unknown sites and also their is no contact details on their site so that i can contact them to remove. So, I have an idea for which i want suggestion " If I change the url that receieves backlinks" does this will remove backlinks? For Example: https://example.com/test/ got 5k backlinks if I change this url to https://examplee.com/test-failed/ does this will remove those 5k backlinks? If not then How Can I remove those Backlinks? I Know about disavow but this takes time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jackson210 -
Can a duplicate page referencing the original page on another domain in another country using the 'canonical link' still get indexed locally?
Hi I wonder if anyone could help me on a canonical link query/indexing issue. I have given an overview, intended solution and question below. Any advice on this query will be much appreciated. Overview: I have a client who has a .com domain that includes blog content intended for the US market using the correct lang tags. The client also has a .co.uk site without a blog but looking at creating one. As the target keywords and content are relevant across both UK and US markets and not to duplicate work the client has asked would it be worthwhile centralising the blog or provide any other efficient blog site structure recommendations. Suggested solution: As the domain authority (DA) on the .com/.co.uk sites are in the 60+ it would risky moving domains/subdomain at this stage and would be a waste not to utilise the DAs that have built up on both sites. I have suggested they keep both sites and share the same content between them using a content curated WP plugin and using the 'canonical link' to reference the original source (US or UK) - so not to get duplicate content issues. My question: Let's say I'm a potential customer in the UK and i'm searching using a keyword phrase that the content that answers my query is on both the UK and US site although the US content is the original source.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonRayner
Will the US or UK version blog appear in UK SERPs? My gut is the UK blog will as Google will try and serve me the most appropriate version of the content and as I'm in the UK it will be this version, even though I have identified the US source using the canonical link?2 -
Using cononical and rel=next / prev for single page app
Hi, We are currently working on a single page ember.js website which compares LED light bulbs (seriously...) the site is www.whichledlight.com the problem in question is www.whichledlight.com/bulbs we are using both rel=next/prev as well as cononical and wondering what affect this would have? all the canonical reference themselves I think, and are also present on the product pages. Our google impressions have dropped recently as well, so we are wondering wether or not this is having a negative affect in regards to how well google wants to play with us. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup0 -
Can Googlebots read canonical tags on pages with javascript redirects?
Hi Moz! We have old locations pages that we can't redirect to the new ones because they have AJAX. To preserve pagerank, we are putting canonical tags on the old location pages. Will Googlebots still read these canonical tags if the pages have a javascript redirect? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Removing old versions of a page.
Recently one of my good friends updated his iweb based screen printing site to wordpress per my recommendation. This update has helped dramatically boost his rankings to #3 for most local keywords. This new site is now V5 of his site, but all older iweb versions are still on the ftp. There are a total of 209 pages on the ftp, as versions of about 30 actual pages. The pages have changed significantly with each update, leaving very little duplicate content, but the old ones are still on the google index. Would it hurt the rankings to clean up these older versions & 301 redirect to the new versions, or should we leave them? The site for reference is: http://takeholdprinting.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GoogleMcDougald0 -
Canonical links apparently not used by google
hi, I do have an ecommerce website (www.soundcreation.ro) which in the last 3 months had a drop in the SERP. Started to look around in GWT what is happening. Google is reporting a lot of duplicate meta-tags (and meta-titles problem). But 99% of them had already canonical links setted. I tried to optimize my product listings with the new "prev", "next" tags and introduced also the "view-all" canonical link to help Google identify the appropiate product listing pages. SeoMoz is not reporting thos duplicate meta issues. Here is an example of the same page with different links, but with the same common canonical and reported by GWT "duplicate title tag": http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10-pageall/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10_999/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-electro-acustice-cid10_1510/What could be the issue?- only that gwt is not refreshing as should be, keeping old errors?- if so, then there is an other serious issue because of why our PR is dropping on several pages?- do we have other problem with the site, which ends up with google penalizing us? Thank you for your ideas!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjutas0 -
Use of the Canonical Tag, Both Internally and Cross Domain
I've seen the cross domain canonical not work at all in my test cases. And an interesting point was brought to my attention today. That point was that in order for the canonical tag to work, the page that you are referencing needs to have the exact same content. And that this was the whole point of the canonical tag, not for it to be used as a 301 but for it to consolidate pages with the same content. I want to know if this is true. Does the page you reference with a canonical tag have to have the same exact content? And what have been your experiences with using the canonical tag referencing another page on a different domain that has the same exact subject matter but not the exact duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GearyLSF372