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.
Adding a Canonical Tag to each page referencing itself?
-
Hey Mozers!
I've noticed that on www.Zappos.com they have a Canonical tag on each page referencing it self. I have heard that this is a popular method but I dont see the point in canon tagging a page to its self.
Any thoughts?
-
Forgive me if this is a silly question, but does this mean you would need to go and identify all the urls with extra parameters, and add canonical tag pointing to the primary url?
Coz if so, that would be an extremly labourious task, no? Some of my duplicate issues, have 50+ urls that are being counted as 'duplicates'.
There must be a better way, hence, I fear this must be a silly question...

-
The self-referencing canonical tags should only be for your actual preferred URLs. So if www.testwebsite.com/duplicate is a duplicate because of parameters (for example), then no, it should not have the self-referencing canonical tag - it should have a canonical tag pointing to the preferred URL should (www.testwebsite.com/ in this case, which would have the self-ref tag).
Zappos example:
- http://www.zappos.com/beyond-yoga-women-shirts-tops~1 (self-ref canonical tag)
- http://www.zappos.com/beyond-yoga-women-shirts-tops~1#!/beyond-yoga-women-shirts-tops/CKvXARDL1wFSAv0eegLgBIIBAukjwAEB4gIFGAECCg8.zso (canonical tag points to unfiltered page)
If www.testwebsite.com/duplicate is a static page that you want indexed, but that has the same content as www.testwebsite.com/, then the solution is updating/adding content to be unique (then applying the self-ref canonical tags to both URLs which are now unique).
Make sense?
-
I've not come across any reason ever that would give cause to be concerned about losing Page Authority by having a page canonical to itself.
-
Well it was more so a concern for me applying this method to my own site more so than a concern for Zappos getting flagged lol

Im curious to know would it do anything at all to the page Authority if you have it Canon tagged to itself?
-
No need to be concerned. Aside from all the really well documented best practices on canonicals, in your original question you've spotted at least one big site that does this. They pay the SEO big bucks and rank well.
-
I would assume that by having each page canon tag itself your basically telling google "Hey I am aware that this is a duplicate but treat it as its own page and not as a version of another". My concern is by doing so your losing potential Page Authority
example:
www.testwebsite.com ---Canonionical--- www.testwebsite.com
www.testwebsite.com/duplicate ---Canonical --- www.testwebsite.com/duplicate
-
Yes this is a good idea as it's a catch all for URLs that might include tracking URL parameters, or other parameters that don't affect the page content. When there are no tracking parameters, it's going to be more development and testing work to hide the canonical, when having it there doesn't cause any issues. It's also quite a brutal but effective catch all if your page was accidentally accessible via other URLs - e.g. non-www or https.
George
-
Moz.com does this as well and you may also see an "Insight" in your Moz Analytics account recommending site-wide implementation 'to prevent any unforeseen duplicate content issues.' I have started following this practice since it really can't hurt & sometimes dup content pops up in the weirdest, most 'unforeseen' ways.
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
-
What are best page titles for sub-domain pages?
Hi Moz communtity, Let's say a website has multiple sub-domains with hundreds and thousands of pages. Generally we will be mentioning "primary keyword & "brand name" on every page of website. Can we do same on all pages of sub-domains to increase the authority of website for this primary keyword in Google? Or it gonna end up as negative impact if Google consider as duplicate content being mentioned same keyword and brand name on every page even on website and all pages of sub domains? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Should I use **tags or h1/h2 tags for article titles on my homepage**
I recently had an seo consultant recommend using tags instead of h1/h2 tags for article titles on the homepage of my news website and category landing pages. I've only seen this done a handful of times on news/editorial websites. For example: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/ Can anyone weigh in on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blankslatedumbo0 -
Duplicate Title tags even with rel=canonical
Hello, We were having duplicate content in our blog (a replica of each post automatically was done by the CMS), until we recently implemented a rel=canonical tag to all the duplicate posts (some 5 weeks ago). So far, no duplicate content were been found, but we are still getting duplicate title tags, though the rel=canonical is present. Any idea why is this the case and what can we do to solve it? Thanks in advance for your help. Tej Luchmun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | luxresorts0 -
Date of page first indexed or age of a page?
Hi does anyone know any ways, tools to find when a page was first indexed/cached by Google? I remember a while back, around 2009 i had a firefox plugin which could check this, and gave you a exact date. Maybe this has changed since. I don't remember the plugin. Or any recommendations on finding the age of a page (not domain) for a website? This is for competitor research not my own website. Cheers, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
Using href lang tag for multi-regional targeting on the same page
Hi, I have the site au.example.com and I ranked on google AustraliaI would like to be ranked also in Google New Zeland for the same page (au.example.com) Because they are geographically & culturally close Can I place href lang tag for both countries and present the same page The code should look like: OR should i have create a different page for New Zealand (for eample: http://au.example.com/EN-NZ) And the code will look like: What will work better or there is other solution? Hope I’m clear.. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda0 -
Dynamic pages - ecommerce product pages
Hi guys, Before I dive into my question, let me give you some background.. I manage an ecommerce site and we're got thousands of product pages. The pages contain dynamic blocks and information in these blocks are fed by another system. So in a nutshell, our product team enters the data in a software and boom, the information is generated in these page blocks. But that's not all, these pages then redirect to a duplicate version with a custom URL. This is cached and this is what the end user sees. This was done to speed up load, rather than the system generate a dynamic page on the fly, the cache page is loaded and the user sees it super fast. Another benefit happened as well, after going live with the cached pages, they started getting indexed and ranking in Google. The problem is that, the redirect to the duplicate cached page isn't a permanent one, it's a meta refresh, a 302 that happens in a second. So yeah, I've got 302s kicking about. The development team can set up 301 but then there won't be any caching, pages will just load dynamically. Google records pages that are cached but does it cache a dynamic page though? Without a cached page, I'm wondering if I would drop in traffic. The view source might just show a list of dynamic blocks, no content! How would you tackle this? I've already setup canonical tags on the cached pages but removing cache.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Meta Tag Force Page Refresh - Good or Bad?
I had recently come across a meta tag that could cause a auto refresh on a users browser when implemented. I have been using it for a redesign and was curious if there could be any negative effects for using it, here is the code: All input is appreciated. Ciao, Todd Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichFinnSEO0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0