Should my canonical tags point to the category page or the filter result page?
-
Hi Moz,
I'm working on an ecommerce site with categories, filter options, and sort options – teacherexpress.scholastic.com.
Should I have canonical tags from all filter and sort options point to the category page like gap.com and llbean.com? or have all sort options point to the filtered page URL like kohls.com?
I was under the impression that to use a canonical tag, the pages have to have the same content, meaning that Gap and L.L. Bean would be using canonical tags incorrectly. Using a filter changes the content, whereas using a sort option just changes the order.
What would be the best way to deal with duplicate content for this site?
Thanks for reading!
-
Hi Daniel,
You've gotten some good responses to your question. Do you have any additional questions or comments you would like to add?
-
I agree, that's a great approach. I think you mean Javascript, not Java though (that's a different language). The only thing that might make this approach a challenge would be if you had so much product data before filtering that it caused a performance problem, i.e. let's say you had 50 pages of results...if you filter server-side, you're only sending down 1 page of results, whereas if you're filtering with client-side Javascript, you've got to send all 50 pages down and then filter it in the browser.
-
Hi Daniel,
Another option may be use java on your filter page so that however customers filter the product, the URL will remain the same with extra parameters in the URL to filter out the products. I find this the best way as you have the same URL for all sort of customization/filter and able to avoid duplicate content.
For example: Macys
-
Hi Daniel,
You're going to have to walk a fine line between having a page for every possible combination of filtered results that a user might search for AND appearing to have a ton of pages that are really almost identical....and suffering the wrath of Panda upon seeing what it thinks is duplicate content.
The easy way out is to have 1 page for each category, and no matter what filters are applied, rel=canonical to that category. Dupe content problem solved.
So why isn't this the ideal solution?
#1 You may be missing out on targeting combinations of categories and filters that users will commonly search for. Let's say you were selling clothing, and a category was shirts, and you had a filter for men/women/boys/girls. By making all shirts list pages rel=canonical to the overall shirts list page (with no filters), you'd be missing an opportunity to target "boys shirts".
#2 You may be missing opportunities to pour more link juice to the individual product pages. It's unclear (to me, anyway) whether Google adds the link juice from all pages rel=canonical'ed to a page, or whether Google simply treats rel=canonical as "oh ya, I've already seen & dealt with this page". Certainly in my testing I've seen places where pages rel=canonical'ed to another page actually still show up in the search results, so I'd say rel=canonical isn't as solid as a 301.
So what do you do? I'd recommend a mix. Figure out what combinations you think you can get search traffic from, and find a way to break down the complete set of combinations of filters and categories to target those, and to rel=canonical every page to one of your targeted pages.
It's entirely possible (likely, even) that you'll end up with a mix. For instance, going back to my earlier example, let's say you had another filter that was, let's say, price range. You might want to target "boys shirts", but not "boys shirts under $20". So, while "boys" was a filter value, and "under $20" was a filter value, you might rel=canonical all pages in the category "boys" with a filter value of "shirts" to your page that has just that category and that 1 filter set, regardless of setting of the price filter.
Clear as monkey poop?
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
-
Weird Bing Search Results
Hi all, I'm hoping someone can explain what's going on here, because after hours of searching I cannot find anyone having the same problem... We use Bing search to provide the site search functionality on our website and recently for a particular keyword search, the results include several pages which are not on our site: they are on completely different domains! You can replicate it by going to bing.com and using the "site:" operator together with that keyword. Again, results from other domains appear in amongst the pages on our site. I cannot find any other keywords which produce this same behaviour: every other keyword I have tried shows only results from our site. However, I obviously haven't tested absolutely every possible keyword combination. Bing isn't "padding" out the results or anything like that, because we have more than enough pages referencing this term on the site, and I'm at a total loss as to why this is happening. So, I suppose my question is: has anyone ever had this happen to them? And if so, what did they do about it? Many thanks, Dan
Algorithm Updates | | clarkovitch0 -
Why would google favour overseas retailers? Really weird results..
Why would google favour results from overseas retailers for queries in the UK? It's weird since most won't ship to the UK and the same products are found at dozens of UK retailers. It's not the case that the overseas sites are necessarily bigger brands or better SEO optimised, so having asked the leading agencies in the UK and them being stumped I was curious if this was something anyone else had seen? Our theory is that this can only be a poorly disguised attempt to drive Adwords.
Algorithm Updates | | predatornutrition0 -
Pages fluctuating +/- 70 positions in Google SERPs?
I've got some pages that appear somewhere around #25 in Google. Every now and then, it just goes away from the top 100 results for a few days (even up to a week) and then it comes back. I've got other pages that rank around #8 which falls down to about #75 for a while and then it comes back. But while a page may be gone from the top 100 results in the US, it still ranks at about the same place everywhere else in the world (+/- 10 positions). I've seen this happen in the past but never it happened so often. What gives?!?
Algorithm Updates | | sbrault740 -
Why am i not ranking in the top 50 for the keyword 'cocktails' even though all my other cocktail related keywords are in the first 2 pages of Google???
I have checked the first 50 pages of google for my website www.socialandcocktail.co.uk using the keyword 'cocktails'. It is NOT to be found. However, if I search for other keyword combinations eg cocktail recipes, cocktail bars etc they are all in the first 2 pages! What is going on????????
Algorithm Updates | | cocktailboss0 -
Authorship Tag
Hi Guys - I asked this Q, on the comments of Joost's blog post on this topic - repeating here, in case I don't get an answer. I have a question of the rel=author tag. Will Google attach the authorship, even if the Google+ profile is a Company page, and not a personal profile? The mugshot on the profile, is basically our logo - not a personal photo. What's the best way to make use of authorship markup, in a case like this? Thanks!! Zak
Algorithm Updates | | ZakD1 -
Categories where "freshness" is of importance
I know that within the past couple of months, Google as made algo updates so that freshness of content is used as more of an indicator for relevancy, and hence, rankings. see: http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/06/search-quality-highlights-39-changes.html I understand that freshness is important across the board, but it is obviously more of a factor for certain search terms. My questions is, how can you determine if your product category (ecommerce) is one where freshness is becoming more of a factor? Is there any way to know which terms are considered to require fresher results? Any input is appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | inhouseseo1 -
Google showing different pages for same search term in uk and usa
Hi Guys, I have an interesting question and think Google is being a bit strange.. Can anyone tell me why when I input the term design agency in Google.co.uk it shows one page, but when i tyupe in the same search term in Google.com (worldwide search) it shows another page.. Any ideas guys? Is this not bit strange?? Any help here be much appreciated.. Thanks Gareth
Algorithm Updates | | GAZ090 -
Too many page links?`
Hi there This blog insert was flag suggesting there was too many page links? I cant identify the same problem? Can anyone explain?
Algorithm Updates | | footballfriends0