Similar pages: noindex or rel:canonical or disregard parameters?!
-
Hey all!
We have a hotel booking website that has search results pages per destinations (e.g. hotels in NYC is dayguest.com/nyc). Pages are also generated for destinations depending on various parameters, that can be star rating, amenities, style of the properties, etc. (e.g. dayguest.com/nyc/4stars, dayguest.com/nyc/luggagestorage, dayguest.com/nyc/luxury, etc.).
In general, all of these pages are very similar, as for example, there might be 10 hotels in NYC and all of them will offer luggage storage. Pages can be nearly identical. Come the problems of duplicate content and loss of juice by dilution.
I was wondering what was the best practice in such a situation: should I just put all pages except the most important ones (e.g. dayguest.com/nyc) as noindex? Or set it as canonical page for all variations? Or in google webmaster tool ask google to disregard the URLs for various parameters? Or do something else altogether?!
Thanks for the help!
-
Sorry, I don't think I explained (1) very well. What I mean is that you may want to gradually change the site architecture so that not all of the search options are crawlable pages. This could mean putting some filters in form variables, for example (instead of links). It could also mean making sure that certain paths always converge. There's no easy solution. This is a problem all big sites face, and it's very dependent on the platform/CMS.
With (2), a "level" could be anything. Maybe there are major cities you need to cover but everything else could stay out of the index. This really depends on your information architecture, but there's always something that's high priority and something that's low priority. If you can focus Google on the high-priority pages, it can definitely work in your favor. The trick is figuring out how to build the logic such that you can code that dynamically. I've found there's almost always an answer, but it can take some creative thinking. I definitely don't encourage doing it manually.
If the results are easy to group by city and you can code that logic, the canonical may be fine. Since the search results could be different in some cases, canonical isn't technically the best choice, but it does often work. It really depends on how different they can be, so it's a bit tricky.
-
Honestly, option 1 would be a nightmare. Imagine that we add one property in a city not covered. There are about 50 amenities, and most hotels feature most, so as much new pages generated. That would become quickly unmanageable, to handle manually.
Not sure I understand your second option. There are not several "level", only one under the "city" in which the property is. But mutliplied by several cities, they quickly become hundreds, if not thousands.
Why would it not be possible/desirable to code all such pages as canonical pages of each city?
-
Ugh - that's what I was afraid you'd say. Unfortunately, the coincidental problem can't really be easily solved with code, which makes it hard to use canonical tags. There's no good way to tell the site when to use them.
So, a couple of options:
(1) Try to gradually rework the structure so that there are less of these paths.
(2) Consider using META NOINDEX on some lower-value paths. Internal search results don't have great value for Google, so you could let the major categories/options be indexed, but the cut off a certain level (index nothing "below" it). That may be more feasible from a code standpoint.
(3) Use rel=prev/next, use unique TITLEs if possible (based on the query) and just clean things up the best you can, but leave everything indexed.
It depends a lot on your scope, structure, and your future plans. I'm not sure there's one "right" answer.
-
Ugh - that's what I was afraid you'd say. Unfortunately, the coincidental problem can't really be easily solved with code, which makes it hard to use canonical tags. There's no good way to tell the site when to use them.
So, a couple of options:
(1) Try to gradually rework the structure so that there are less of these paths.
(2) Consider using META NOINDEX on some lower-value paths. Internal search results don't have great value for Google, so you could let the major categories/options be indexed, but the cut off a certain level (index nothing "below" it). That may be more feasible from a code standpoint.
(3) Use rel=prev/next, use unique TITLEs if possible (based on the query) and just clean things up the best you can, but leave everything indexed.
It depends a lot on your scope, structure, and your future plans. I'm not sure there's one "right" answer.
-
These pages return the same results coincidentally, that's the issue... The more properties we get on board, the less likely it is that these pages will be similar. But it might take a long time to build that up, and we may never achieve it.
-
Ah, got it - yeah, I think rel=canonical would be fine there, but I'd want to understand your architecture better. Are these pages returning the same results coincidentally, or are these two URLs that basically land on the same combination of search options/filters. If it's the former, it's a lot tougher, because that's just a coincidence happening at large scale. If it's the latter, a solid canonical scheme could help a lot, but I'd also explore whether these paths are useful (or should be indexed at all). In other words, in the long term, it might be better to use one URL consistently, even if people navigate by different paths to reach it.
-
That's odd, they were supposed to be the same. And yeah, results come and go as properties are added/removed from our inventory.
The following is what I wanted to highlight:
http://www.dayguest.com/rome-dayuse/concierge
http://www.dayguest.com/rome-dayuse/air-conditioning
As you can see, the pages are identical, except that one has 5 properties and the other one has 6. Most overlap. There are so manies property "features" or "category", that some list have exactly the same list. Actually, SEOMOZ find that I have over 1700 pages with duplicate content, most being search results page with closely similar contents such as these.
Hence my issue...
-
Are they duplicates in the sense that there are currently no results? I wouldn't generally use rel=canonical on these, because the search results should (theoretically) be different. These are distinct regions and, I assume, have unique properties.
If they're just returning no results, I'd actually consider a META NOINDEX until there are results available. Otherwise, this is likely to be treated as a soft 404 by Google (not a disaster, honestly). It depends on whether results come and go or if you're just building out the site and there will be data later. If the data isn't ready, I think META NOINDEX is a good way to go. Until results are available, these pages have no search value.
-
Well, let me give you an example, look at this page: http://www.dayguest.com/milan-city-centre-dayuse?amenities=10
And this page: http://www.dayguest.com/milan-central-station-dayuse?amenities=10
Do you see what I'm talking about? The pages are identical but for the page title/description & a few words on the page.
So, you'd go for canonical?
-
The relation is more hierarchal then next/previous. Judging from the post you mentioned, canonical would be more appropriate...
-
Sorry, I'm not clear on whether these are paginated search results or actual property pages that vary only by a small amount. As @SEO5 said, if these are paginated search results, you could use rel=prev/next. It's a bit tricky to set up with search filters (you need rel=prev/next + rel=canonical).
If these are nearly identical property pages, then it depends on how they differ. If they only differ by one attribute, I'd probably lean toward the canonical tag.
-
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
-
Canonical tag use for ecommerce product page detail
Hi, I have a category page I want to rank. This page has 24 different products quite similar but not exactly the same.
Technical SEO | | amastone
I want to use canonical tag in any product to the parent category.
Is this a right use of the canonical?
Category page I'm talking about is : Finger bits If I understand how to use canonical tags I can improve all my category pages. thanks marco0 -
Question on canonicals
hi community let's say i have to 2 e-commerce sites selling the same English books in different currencies - one of the site serves the UK market ( users can purchase in sterling) while another one European markets ( user can purchase in euro). Sites are identical. SEO wise, while the "European" site homepage has a good ranking across major search engines in europe, product pages do not rank very well at all. Since site is a .com too it s hard to push it in local search engines. I would like then to push one of the sites across all search engines,tackling duplicate content etc.Geotargeting would make the rest. I would like to add canonicals tag pointing at the UK version across all EU site product pages, while leaving the EU homepage rank. I have 2 doubts though: is it ok to have canonical tags pointing at an external site. is it ok to have part of a site with canonical tags, while other parts are left ranking?
Technical SEO | | Mrlocicero0 -
Canonical tag for Home page: with or without / at the end???
Setting up canonical tags for an old site. I really need advice on that darn backslash / at the end of the homepage URL. We have incoming links to the homepage as http://www.mysite.com (without the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/ (with the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/index.html I know that there should be 301 redirects to just one version, but I need to know more about the canonical tags... Which should the canonical tag be??? (without the backslash) or (with the backslash) Thanks for your help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
Why are these pages duplicates when canonical is defined?
The SEOmoz reports indicate that the following pages are duplicates even though the canonical tag has been added. http://www.designquotes.com.au/dq/web/get-quotes/quotes http://www.designquotes.com.au/dq/web/get-quotes/brief Is this normal?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
Indexed pages and current pages - Big difference?
Our website shows ~22k pages in the sitemap but ~56k are showing indexed on Google through the "site:" command. Firstly, how much attention should we paying to the discrepancy? If we should be worried what's the best way to find the cause of the difference? The domain canonical is set so can't really figure out if we've got a problem or not?
Technical SEO | | Nathan.Smith0 -
Rel=Canonical to Rewrite or original URL?
Working with a large number of duplicate pages due to different views of products. Rewriting URLs for the most linked page. Should rel=canonical point to the rewritten URL or the actual URL? Is there a way to see what the rewritten URL is within the crawl data? I was taking the approach of rewriting only the base version of each page and then using a rel=canonical on the duplicate pages. Can anyone recommend a better or cleaner approach? Haven't seen too many articles on retail SEO when faced with a less than optimized CMS. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AmsiveDigital0 -
On Page 301 redirect for html pages
For php pages youve got Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Technical SEO | | shupester
Header( "Location: http://www.example.com" );
?> Is there anything for html pages? Other then Or is placing this code redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.php in the .htaccess the only way to properly 301 redirect html pages? Thanks!0 -
Home Page Canonical Question
I have an online store through hosting service Volusion. I have asked them about this and was told that this is normal. I would like to confirm this with you guys because I'm not convinced of the quality of their customer service and I'm not an expert. When I check Analytics the landing page that is visited most often is www....../default.asp and the second most visited is www........./ . These are, of course, both my home page. Volusion has radio button that allows the admin to "enable canonical links", which I have enabled, and they told me that it is normal to see this on google analytics regardless. When I type in either of those addreses, the homepage comes up as the address that I typed. In other words it doesn't redirect so that it is always the same. Am I right to be concerned about this?
Technical SEO | | berglin0