Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
-
Very simple,
Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm
I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original.
Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
-
For all practical purposes, Google doesn't seem to index pages where it recognizes the canonical as legitimate. You won't find them in a "site:" query, "cache:" command, etc. Google may call that a "filter", but once it's reached that point, the URL is as good as de-indexed. There may be subtle, technical distinctions, but the end result is virtually the same.
-
Not quite. Canonical (per Matt Cutts) is considered a hint as to what the real page is. It doesn't stop the duplicate page from being crawled or indexed (a page that isn't indexed will not show up anywhere in Google for any query), it prevents the duplicate page from winning the duplicate race (i.e. if you don't pick a winner, Google will pick one for you).
-
Thanks Tom (and everyone else for the replies),
So if someone linked to a page with a querystring Google wouldn't index that page because the canonical tag is pointing to a url which doesn't have that query in?
I like the scraped part as well, that in itself makes it worth while.
-
Newegg.com uses this because they have affiliates, searches and numerous other things that affect their query strings.
Remember that ANY change to the query string is seen as a new page. So
domain.com?page=a&link=1
domain.com?page=a&link=2are considered separate pages, even if they return the same content.
Canonical is used to determine which duplicate page "wins" the index race. All other versions are considered duplicate and, thus, devalued.
-
There's a couple of reasons why people might want to do this (and why I do with all my websites)
First of all, the page/site might be scraped and replicated by a bot, particularly if it's an authority domain. Having your canonicals in place to begin with will help reduce the chance of your content being seen as duplicate, should a bot scrape your site.
Another reason would be if a website might generate any additional versions of the page through queries, eg www.domain.com/page.php?query2 - Having a self referring canonical will also tell Google that you want to rank the URL without any other queries, which can help prevent any of those queries appearing in the Google index and/or SERPs.
-
Hi,
I am not an expert, so please do not take my answer very seriously. What you mention, of making a canonical tag pointing to the same URL, looks fine. In my understanding, canonical tags were created to tell the search engines that a page is the right one, even if the system you are using creates address that could look like duplicate content. For example, if you are using a Content Management System like wordpress or Joomla, you could have the following:
-
http://domain.com/date/month/page1 and so on.
Search engines (again, I am not sure, I am just a newbee), could think all this pages are duplicate content, and could penalize you for this. But if you indicate with the canonical tag that the right url is http://domain.com/page1, then you are safe.
I hope somebody with more experience could help you better,
Best Regards,
Daniel
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 Optimization Error
Hi, I am trying to track a page optimization feature for one of my project, https://shinaweb.com but i keep getting this below error: "PAGE OPTIMIZATION ERROR
On-Page Optimization | | shinawebnavid
There was a problem loading this page. Please make sure the page is loading properly and that our user-agent, rogerbot, is not blocked from accessing this page." I checked robots.txt file, it all looks fine. Not sure what is the problem? Is it a problem with Moz or the website?0 -
What is the best meta description for Category Pages, Tag Pages and Main Article?
Hi, I want to index all my categories and tags. But I fear about duplicating the meta description. for example: I have a tag name "Learn Stock Market", a category name "Learning", and a main article "What is Stock Market". What is your suggestion for meta description of these three pages that looks great for seo google?
On-Page Optimization | | mbmozmb0 -
Landing page separate from product page
Hello there, I have a wordpress website with a woocommerce plugin. I have 4 landing pages that describe my products and at the end of the pages, I have a CTA to my product page. is it bad for SEO? my website: https://relationadviser.ir
On-Page Optimization | | Aaron.be1 -
Commas in title tags
Hello Guys, Thanks in advance for all who can help me with this I am helping a dinnerware company with their SEO. I told them to change their ambiguous title tags for more specific ones. However, they opted to create some title tags with 2 or three keywords separated by commas. I have attached an excel image illustrating their new title tags.. My question is, will this format be a problem with Google--penalties? The questionable title tags are highlighted in light orange. Thanks! lHH92
On-Page Optimization | | HectorCortes0 -
SVG image files causing multiple title tags on page - SEO issue?
Does anyone have any experience with SVG image files and on-page SEO? A client is using them and it seems they use the title tag in the same way a regular image (JPG/PNG) would use an image ALT tag. I'm concerned that search engines will see the multiple title tags on the page and that this will cause SEO issues. Regular crawlers like Moz flag it as a second title tag, however it's outside the header and in a SVG wrap so the crawlers really should understand that this is a SVG title rather than a second page title. But is this the case? If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.
On-Page Optimization | | mrdavidingram2 -
H1 Tags on Volusion Product Pages
So I'm working with a client who has no heading tags on his site and I'm wondering if there is an ideal method to implementing these on the product pages specifically, as the wording I ideally want to specify is is the product title, which i can't really code with an H1. Has anyone run into this issue? If so, what was your solution? Also, how vital are these heading tags on the product pages, anyways? If the Volusion SEO expert could chime in, that would be much appreciated. Thanks everyone!
On-Page Optimization | | BrandLabs0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page
Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...
On-Page Optimization | | MarieA1