Why do Twitter Canonicalise to Home?
-
I have just noticed that Twitter canonicalise back to their homepage from every profile page that I checked.
Check the source on any profile, and the canonical looks like this:
rel="canonical" href="https://twitter.com/" />
Have I completely missed something here? I don't get why Twitter need to, or indeed would want to do this.
As far as I understand it, Twitter is hinting to Google that they should ignore profile pages and only rank the homepage. Except Google doesn't. If you search for "Rand Fishkin Twitter", you'll get Rand's page. Search "[Anyone You Like] Twitter" and you'll get to their exact page.
Hope somebody can shed some light on this, as it seems counter intuitive to tell Google to ignore profile pages when I imagine a significant chunk of their search traffic comes from people searching Google for specific profiles.
Cheers,
Mark
-
Hi William,
Thanks for your opinion - I must admit it still seems strange to me. OK so they want to give the Twitter homepage more authority - but in doing so make it less likely that individual profiles get ranked? Obviously they are aware that Google will index deeper pages anyway, as that's exactly what they are doing. I know that canonical is a hint, but it seems pointless when they must get a load of value from profile pages.
Would love to hear from somebody who has a really good idea of why - still a mystery to me!
Thanks,
Mark
-
I believe it might be for users logged in to differentiiate.
When you are at your own homepage I think its like twitter.com/#
or
It could be to point more authority to the homepage as whole. Canonical is just a "hey you SHOULD", doesn't mean you HAVE TO.
Canonical links are to help search engines.
This is my opinion.
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
-
Why is my home page ranking much higher than my collection page?
Hi everyone, Why is my client's home page ranking high for a certain keyword phrase rather than a collection page I have which is well optimised for this keyword? The collection page is on the 10th SERPs page. I did see there were keywords used in the footer of page and the keyword was also used in some intro text on the home page so I removed the keyword from these two places nearly 2 weeks ago and requested google to reindex both the collection page and home page and I've not seen any improvement of the collection page's ranking in SERPs. I also changed the meta description and meta title as the ctr was poor but there wasn''t that many impressions either. It is a competitive keyword organically so maybe the collection page's authority is just not good enough compared to the competitors hence why they are choosing the home page as it has higher page authority however this still is not helpful to searchers who land on home page. Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can do to get google to rank the ocllection page higher for the keyword instead of home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TZ19820 -
Home page suddenly dropped from index!!
A client's home page, which has always done very well, has just dropped out of Google's index overnight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
Webmaster tools does not show any problem. The page doesn't even show up if we Google the company name. The Robot.txt contains: Default Flywheel robots file User-agent: * Disallow: /calendar/action:posterboard/
Disallow: /events/action~posterboard/ The only unusual thing I'm aware of is some A/B testing of the page done with 'Optimizely' - it redirects visitors to a test page, but it's not a 'real' redirect in that redirect checker tools still see the page as a 200. Also, other pages that are being tested this way are not having the same problem. Other recent activity over the last few weeks/months includes linking to the page from some of our blog posts using the page topic as anchor text. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Caro0 -
Twitter Robots.TXT
Hello Moz World, So, I trying to wrap my head around all of the different robots.txt. I decided to dive into a site like Twitter, and look at their robot text. And now, I'm super confused. What are they telling the search engines with /hasttag/*src=. Why don't they just use: Useragent: * Disallow: But, they address each search engine. Is there any benefit to this? Thanks for all of the awesome responses!!! B/R Will H.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarketingChimp100 -
Sudden Drop in rank of Keyword "Sobha Aspirational Homes"
Hi, For domain http://www.homeadda-sobhaaspirationalhomes.in/ keyword Sobha Aspirational Homes, We had google india ranking 5 continuously for past 2 months. There is sudden drop in rank and we have been pushed to rank 114. I do not understand why this happened. Regards, Mithun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mithungowda0 -
Is a 404, then a meta refresh 301 to the home page OK for SEO?
Hi Mozzers I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage. I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page. What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
My home page is not found by the "Grade a Page" tool
My home page as well as several important pages are not found by the Grade a Page tool. With our full https address I got this http://screencast.com/t/s1gESMlGwpa With just the www address I got this http://screencast.com/t/BMRHy36Ih https://www.joomlashack.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | etabush
https://www.joomlashack.com/joomla-templates We recently lost a lot of positions for our most important keyword: Joomla Templates Please help us figure this out. Whats screwy with our site?0 -
Non-home page ranking higher, very odd
One of my new clients has an eCommerce site selling chair mats, that ranks first page for their primary keyword ("chair mats"), but the serp is not showing their home page... It is an odd "resources" page that mostly just has outbound links. I've never seen this. Also, there are no external inbound links to this particular page. How can this be ranking higher than the home page... weeeeird. Update: I haven't done any optimization yet... and yes, I know the site is outdated 🙂 My location is set to San Diego. If I change it (New York City), the Resources2.htm page goes away from the page 1 ranking, and I get a page 2 home page ranking. This is so strange 😕
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
1 of the sites i work on keeps having its home page "de-indexed" by google every few months, I then apply for a review and they put it back up. But i have no idea why this keeps happening and its only the home page
1 of the sites i work on (www.eva-alexander.com) keeps having its home page "de-indexed" by google every few months, I then apply for a review and they put it back up. But i have no idea why this keeps happening and its only the home page I have no idea why and have never experienced this before
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GMD10