Will Google recognize a canonical to a re-directed URL works?
-
A third party canonicalizes to our content, and we've recently needed to re-direct that content to a new URL. The third party is going to take some time updating their canonicals, and I am wondering if search engines will still recognize the canonical even though there is a re-direct in place?
-
I would update the canonical tag on your end to reflect that Page A (that's being redirected to Page B) is no longer the canonical/preferred URL. Add rel="canonical" href="http://domain.com/page-b" to the old & the new page.
I would also send the new tag to the 3rd party with something like 'Hi there- I know you're all super busy, so we thought sharing the new canonical tag with you might help get things updated more quickly' - or something to that effect.
-
I agree with Sage!
-
Yeah, google will see the 301 and follow it. Just patiently wait for them to update on their end.
-
Yes. 301 simply means "Hey Search Engine, this page has moved to here." It'll pick up the change.
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
-
Re-direct Irrelevant (high ranking) blog articles?
One of our sites has some old & completely irrelvant blog articles that are high ranking & receive the top two visited pages for the entire site (more page views than the homepage even). Our marketing managers are wanting to take down the blog posts since they are falsely inflating their traffic numbers with irrelevant visitors. I'm concerned by taking them down and re-directing to another site it will affect our overall domain authority and rankings for relevant keywords. Thoughts and/or resources on taking down vs. keeping up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mfcb0 -
Is it possible that Google would disregard canonical tag?
Hi all, I was wondering if it is possible for Google to diregard the canonical tag, if for example they decide it is wrongly put based on behavioural data. On the Natviscript Blog's individual blog posts there is a canonical tag for the www.nativescript.org/blog/details (printscreen - http://prntscr.com/e8kz5k). In my opinion it should not be there, and I've put request to our Engineering team for removal some time ago. Interestingly, all blog posts are indexed and got decent amount of organic traffic despite the tag. What do you think? Could it be that Google would disregard the tag based on usage data from let's say GA? Thanks, Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
Is there a tool to find out if a URL has been deemed "SPAM" by GOOGLE
I am currently doing a link audit on one of my sites and I am coming across some links that appear to be spam. Is there a tool that I can plug their URL into to see if they have been deemed spam by GOOGLE?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mozd0 -
Not ranking in Google - why???
This will be a bit long, so please bare with me. I have a client in the auto parts industry who wants to rank their homepage for 13 different keywords. We are ranked first page for all keywords in Yahoo! Mexico and Bing Mexico, but not ranking first page at all in Google Mexico. My client's competitor, however, is clearly outranking my client in Google. When comparing both pages, my client's, while not 100% optimized, looks better optimized than their competitor's. Looking at all metrics using Moz, SEMRush, ahrefs, etc... my client's site looks MUCH better on all fronts. I know ranking a single homepage for more than 10 keywords is a difficult task. Our competitor is however, ranking for them, so it's not impossible. The keywords are not even that competitive according to Moz's analysis. I decided to create an optimized page for each keyword to try to rank these pages, but still my client wants the homepage to rank (again, if the competitor is ranking, then it's possible to do this) and I am afraid these pages I created could result in keyword cannibalization ultimately affecting the homepage's possibility to rank. My client had a previous SEO agency working for them and basically all they did was create fake blogs and have lots of keyword rich links directed to the site's homepage. I got the complete link profile from several tools and submitted a disavow requests for as many fishy links I could find, but that hasn't shown any results so far. Note: when looking at the competitor link profile, they have basically just a few links and no external links of real value whatsoever. My client is obviously very frustrated, and so am I. In my SEO experience, it shouldn't be such a difficult task to accomplish, however nothing seems to work even though everything seems to point that my client should rank higher. So now I'm running out of ideas regarding what to do with this site. Any insight you could provide would be SO helpful to me and my client. If needed I can provide my client's homepage URL and also their competitors homepage for you to review. i can also give you any extra information you need. Thanks a lot!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EduardoRuiz0 -
301 Re-direct Implementation & Its Possible Aftermaths
Hi all, I'm currently working on a domain that seems to be 'unofficially' blacklisted by Google. The reason behind my belief are, Ranking process of KW became stagnant. Current crawling and indexing rate has been decreased. Site performance deteriorate after every Search engine update or major data refreshes. And few major indications pointing out that search engines might started doubting its authority. The site is live n running for about 10+ yr and consists of 6000+ pages out of which 5000+ pages are indexed. The site also have some serious issues like, The site has been 2 times penalized by Google. The link ratio & inbound link quality of the site is quite unnatural (mostly directory links, links form spammy sites, bad-neighborhood links etc. ) The site is in flat file and not CMS, thus making it extremely difficult to maintain and update it. Due to the above reasons I was thinking of implementing 301 re-direction. I would like to redirect this poor performing existing domain to a new fresh one keeping the URL structure and files same and maintaining 1:1 redirection rules. I've read an awesome article by Danny Dover on 301 Re direction of a site here in SEOMOZ. It seems that if any one follow the steps mentioned there can actually get benefited by the overall re direction process. Now I'd like know your suggestion about following points: 1. Considering the factors that I've stated, do you think that it would be good to go with this re direction idea? 2. If 301 is implemented then what can be its immediate effects on current rankings and site performance? 3. Assuming that the ranks drowned or gets completely vanished from SERP, after what approx time period can be regain back? 4. Any other suggestion that might help me out to better understand the situation.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ITRIX0 -
How accurate and quick does Google pick up on canonical tags?
Hey Peeps! I was just wondering what your experiences are in how fast Google will pick up on canonical tags and how often they use the 'strong hint' in stead of leaving it be? I'm based in The Netherlands and for websites with a decent amount of content and links (where Google indexes new content quickly) they pick up on it within 1-2 weeks. So far they've ignored some canonical tags on one of my websites. Perhaps that's because they don't agree with the degree in which the pages are similar. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StevenvanVessum0 -
Posing QU's on Google Variables "aclk", "gclid" "cd", "/aclk" "/search", "/url" etc
I've been doing a bit of stats research prompted by read the recent ranking blog http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables There are a few things that have come up in my research that I'd like to clear up. The below analysis has been done on my "conversions". 1/. What does "/aclk" mean in the Referrer URL? I have noticed a strong correlation between this and "gclid" in the landing page variable. Does it mean "ad click" ?? Although they seem to "closely" correlate they don't exactly, so when I have /aclk in the referrer Url MOSTLY I have gclid in the landing page URL. BUT not always, and the same applies vice versa. It's pretty vital that I know what is the best way to monitor adwords PPC, so what is the best variable to go on? - Currently I am using "gclid", but I have about 25% extra referral URL's with /aclk in that dont have "gclid" in - so am I underestimating my number of PPC conversions? 2/. The use of the variable "cd" is great, but it is not always present. I have noticed that 99% of my google "Referrer URL's" either start with:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
/aclk - No cd value
/search - No cd value
/url - Always contains the cd variable. What do I make of this?? Thanks for the help in advance!0