Does rel="canonical" support protocol relative URL?
-
I need to switch a site from http to https. We gonna add 301 redirect all over the board. I also use rel="canonical" to strip some queries parameter from the index (parameter uses to identify which navigation elements were use.)
rel="canonical" can be used with relative or absolute links, but Google recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties. So here my question, did you see any issue using relative protocol in rel="canonical"?
Instead of:
-
Relative URLs can be used, but it's still superior to use absolute URLs to avoid any mistakes down the line. i.e. you miss a 301 redirect on a subdirectory and both HTTP and HTTPs versions resolve.
Relative URLs can be used in a pinch, but aren't recommended.
-
You can use a relative canonical but the example you give is wrong, it should be href="/page1.html" The example you give looks like mis take 2 on this page http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
rgds
Dirk
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 could cause Google to not honor canonical URLs?
I have a strange situation on a website, when I do a Google query of site:example.com all the top indexed results appear to be queries that users can perform on the website. So any random term the user searches for on the website for some reason is causing the search result page to get indexed - like example.com/search/query/random-keywords However, the search results page has a canonical tag on it that points to example.com/search, but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. Any thoughts or ideas why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Which Version Url to Use for Canonical Tags and in General for Homepage.
I want to put canonical tags on the homepage of a site. cant figure out the version of URL of the homepage should be with a / at the end or without the / ( www.example.com of www.example.com/ ) if I put into the google the URL with / I get the URL without the / in my browser, and it isn't showing as a redirect in my moz extension or other tools. But when I copy the URL from browser and paste elsewhere it pastes with a / I have two questions 1 - in general how does it work with URLs of homepages - I see this happening with lots of sites? 2 - which URL should I set as the canonical version of my homepage? Thanks so much
Technical SEO | | Ruchy0 -
URL has caps, but canonical does not. Now what?
Hi, Just started working with a site that has the occasional url with a capital, but then the url in the canonical as lower case. Neither, when entered in a browser, resolves to the other. It's a Shopify site. What do you think I should do?
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
Why does my mobile site have a "?mobiRedirect=1" string at the end of the URL?
Hello, When trying to access my site from a smart-phone, I'm getting a redirected to the mobile version (which is correct), however at the end of the URL there is a redirect string that shows every time. I'm not sure why its its showing or how it automatically gets appended to the end of the URL each time. How can I configure my mobile site to prevent the ?mobiRedirect=1" from showing? For example, if you search for "Columbus Regional Health" on Google with a smart-phone, the first result should be for www.crh.org. If you click that, you should get redirected to www.crh.org/mobile , however its displaying the URL as http://www.crh.org/mobile/default.aspx?mobiRedirect=1 Does anyone know how to fix this? Thank you,
Technical SEO | | Liamis
Brian0 -
Is the " meta content tag" important?
I am currently trying to optimize my companies website and I noticed that meta content is exactly the same for all of the pages on our website. Isn't this problematic? The actual content on the webpage is not the same and a lot of the pages don't have these keywords in the content.
Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
Objects behind "hidden" elements
If you take a look at this page: http://www.americanmuscle.com/2010-mustang-body-kits.html You will notice we have a little "Read More" script set up. I have used Google Data Validator to test structured data located behind this 'Read More' and it checks out OK but I was wondering if anyone has insight to whether or not the spiders are even seeing links, etc. behind the 'Read More' script.
Technical SEO | | andrewv0 -
ECommerce Site, URL's, Canonical and Tracking Referral Traffic
I'm very, very new to eCommerce websites that employ many different URL's to track referral traffic. I have a client that has 18 different URL's that land on the Home Page in order to track traffic from different referral sources. For example: http://erasedisease.com/?ref=abot - Tracks traffic from an affiliate source http://erasedisease.com/?ref=FB01 - Tracks traffic from a FB Ad http://erasedisease.com/?ref=sas&SSAID=289169 - Tracks more affiliate traffic ...and the list goes on and on. My first question is do you think this could hinder our Google rankings? SEOMoz Crawl doesn't show any Duplicate Content Errors, so I guess that's good. I've just been reading a lot about Canonical Url's and eCommerce sites, but I'm not sure if this is a situation where I'd want to use some kind of canonical plugin for this Wordpress website or not. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!!
Technical SEO | | Linwright0 -
How to add "no follow" to feeds
Hey all, I just had a crawl test done on my site(created using wordpress) and I received a ton of missing meta tag descriptions to fix. The odd thing is though I use "All in One" SEO Tool and the actual pages or posts on the site do have meta tag descriptions, however I noticed for every post an RSS Feed is being automatically generated and this Feed is the culprit without meta tag descriptions. I am totally clueless on how to resolve these errors as I havent installed any WP plugins that generate feeds automatically. Has anyone encountered this problem before or know how to fix this?? The site url is http:// GovernmentGrantsAustralia . org I have left spaces above to avoid being a link dropper 🙂 Would really appreciate if anyone can help! Thanks a million, Jus
Technical SEO | | justin990