Canonical Help (this is a nightmare)
-
Hi, We're new to SEO and trying to fix our domain canonical issue. A while back we were misusing the "link canonical" tag such that Google was tracking params (e.g. session ids, tagging ) all as different unique urls. This created a nightmare as now Google thinks there's millions of pages associated with our domain when the reality is really a couple thousand unique links.
Since then, we've tried to fix this by: 1) specifying params to ignore via SEO webmasters 2) properly using the canonical tag.
-
However, I'm still recognizing there's a bunch of outsanding search results that resulted from this mess. Any idea on expectation on when we'd see this cleaned up?
-
I'm also recognizing that google is looking at http://domain.com and https://domain.com as 2 different pages even though we specify to only look at "http://domain.com" via the link canonical tag. Again, is this just a matter of waiting for Google to update its results? We submitted a site map but it seems like it's taking forever for the results of our site to clear up...
Any help or insight would greatly be appreciated!
-
-
What I do when I want to get an idea of how frequently Google crawls a page is I look at when it was last crawled. If the cached date was a long time ago, Google probably doesn't crawl it that often. If it was recently cached, it could mean a more frequent crawl—but it also might be that I just caught it at the right time. So I look at a few similar pages to see if they agree.
(To see when a page was cached, do a search on the URL of the page in question—just put the URL right in the search box. In the results, look next to the green URL in the result which is the page you searched for and there is a little green triangle. Click that, and you will see "cached." Choose that, and it will bring up the version of the page that Google has cached, along with the date it was cached.)
Don't worry too much. Even without your fixes, Google will figure out the situation on its own and start showing a preferred URL anyway. But yes, it is generally a good choice to show yourself in the best light and follow best practices to make things as easy as possible for Google.
-
There is no specific, hard set, predefined "time" between crawls that applies to all sites.
It varies, from site to site.
It varies from page to page.
It is based on Popularity.
If your page/site is not popular - then it will take longer till it is crawled again.
-
Thanks for a response.
What's a 'normal' wait time -- 2 days? 7 days? 14 days? How do I know when to try again?
-
If you've changed your canonical tag, but Google hasn't updated its index, there's nothing more you can do till you see what effect it has. Wait a few days and post again with your results. If something's out of order, at least we have another data set to compare it to.
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
-
Google-selected canonical makes no sense
Howdy, fellow mozzers, We have added canonical URL to this page - https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/houston-tx/margot-schurig-8715369/share, pointing to https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/houston-tx/margot-schurig-8715369 When I check in Google search console, there are no issues reported with that page, and Google does say that it was able to properly read the canonical URL. Yet, it still chooses the page itself as canonical. This doesn't make sense to me. (Here is the link to the screenshot: https://dmitrii-regexseo.tinytake.com/tt/MzU0Mjc0M18xMDY2MTc4Ng) Has anyone dealt with this type of issue, and were you able to resolve it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
Canonical - unexpected page ranking
We are getting good ranking for an unexpected page, rathewr than the one we were trying to get ranking for. Should we put a canonical on the 'unexpected page' to the page we would like to receive the ranking for - or do we risk losing the ranking? Any suggestions welcomed. Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Substance-create0 -
Help with force redirect HTTP to HTTPS
Hi, I'm unsure of where I should be putting the following code for one of my Wordpress websites so that they redirect all HTTP requests to HTTPS. RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] This is my current htaccess file: *missing
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Easigrass0 -
Help needed on HTTPS
Hi Can anyone help me. I need some help with some example of large e-commerce sites going to https. Ideally these need to be e-commerce sites but any large site will be great, so that I can show the impact. The site can be based anywhere in the world, its more the impact I am after. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Rel=canonical an iframed version of the same website?
My issue is that we have two websites with the same content. For the sake of an example lets say they are: jackson.com jacksonboats.com When you go to jacksonboats.com, the website is an iframed version of jackson.com. However all of the companies email addresses are example@jacksonboats.com so a 301 is not possible. What would be the best way to forward over the link juice from jacksonboats.com to jackson.com? I'm thinking a rel=canonical tag, but I wanted to ask first. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BenGMKT0 -
Canonical and On-Page Report Card
Hello, One quick question about rel canonical. If i use SeoMoz amazing on-page optimization tool i get a grade B if i use www.mydomain.com and my keyword. I get a grade A if i use https://www.mydomain.com and same keyword. I get the grade B coz i don't get the check mark to "Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical" box. Should i use this rel canonical stuff if i am 301 redirecting www. version to https://www. version already. Regards, OÜInigo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InigoOU0 -
Social Buttons Help SEO, 2 Questions...
Howdy Guys, I noticed a weird thing over the weekend - our main keyword has been hit pretty hard by penguin and we had dropped down to #79. On Friday I decided to change some on-page optimisation and changed the title tag and some tags. When I've ran my rank tracker this morning we have jumped up to #62... Has anyone else noticed just a simple change boosts rankings? Second Questions We took all our social buttons off the website back in January as no-body was using them but from a few recent reports I've seen having the buttons on the site help organic rankings... Is this true? Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Duplicate Content Help
seomoz tool gives me back duplicate content on both these URL's http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/ http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/index.php I want to use http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/ as this just look nice & clean. What would be best practice to fix this issue? Kind Regards Eddie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780