If a URL canonically points to another link, is that URL indexed?
-
Hi,
I have two URL both talking about keyword phrase 'counting aggregated cells'
The first URL has canonical link pointing to the second URL, but if one searches for 'counting aggregated cells' both URLs are shown in the results.
The first URL is the pdf, and i need only second URL (the landing page) to be shown in the search results.
The canonical links should tell Google which URL to index, i don't understand why both URLs are present in search results? Is 'noindex' for the first URL only solution?
I am using Yoast SEO for my website.
Thank you for the answers.
-
Hey Lana,
Similar to what Anthony said, you're setup should keep the PDF url from being indexed. In order to help ensure the PDF doesn't get indexed you can do the following:
- Use the robots.txt file to block Google crawlers:
User-agent: *
Disallow: *.pdf
- Use rel="nofollow" on links that point to the PDF
-
If set up correctly, using the canonical tag as described above will usually keep the actual PDF out of the index. Using NoIndex is a guaranteed method to keep it out of the index.
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
-
Sitemap and canonical
In my sitemap I have two entries for my page ContactUs.asp ContactUs.asp?Lng=E ContactUs.asp?Lng=F What should I use in my page ContactUS.asp ? Is this correct?
Technical SEO | | CustomPuck0 -
Canonical
i have some static webpages in root and wordpress installed in subdirectory , Canonical tag for the whole website was with trailing slash , i stripped the HTML extensions for static webpages but i can't force to add trailing slash to the static webpages so i changed the canonical for html webpages from http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles.html/ to http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles but the Wordpress" http://ghadaalsaman.com/blog/ " still with trailing slash , when i've checked my google webmasters i found that my indexed pages dropped down 100 page ! what should i put in the canonical for the static pages? i tried to strip the slash from wordpress but i failed , so my static webpages canonical with no trailing slash and wordpress with trailing slash .
Technical SEO | | NeatIT0 -
Redirecting a Few URLS from One Domain to Another
Hello, I have two websites within a similar niche...some of the top organic traffic driving pages on Website B I'd like to redirect to a similar page on Website A. The reason is Website A is a bigger and better and is monetized much better as well. I only want to redirect a few of the main URLS on Website A and also only those that I have similar content on my main Website B. Is this process safe for SEO? What is the best way to go about this process. I am not really concerned with Website B and what happens to it's rankings, but in the meantime, I'd like to redirect the traffic from some of it's main organic traffic driving pages to my main website A and to it's similar pages. I am also concerned with making sure my main website A stays white hat and doesn't receive any negativity from these redirects. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | juicyresults0 -
Page Indexing increase when I request Google Site Link demote
Hi there, Has anyone seen a page crawling increase in Google Web Master Tools when they have requested a site link demotion? I did this around the 23rd of March, the next day I started to see page crawling rise and rise and report a very visible spike in activity and to this day is still relatively high. From memory I have asked about this in SEOMOZ Q&A a couple of years ago in and was told that page crawl activity is a good thing - ok fine, no argument. However at the nearly in the same period I have noticed that my primary keyword rank for my home page has dropped away to something in the region of 4th page on Google US and since March has stayed there. However the exact same query in Google UK (Using SEOMOZ Rank Checker for this) has remained the same position (around 11th) - it has barely moved. I decided to request an undemote on GWT for this page link and the page crawl started to drop but not to the level before March 23rd. However the rank situation for this keyword term has not changed, the content on our website has not changed but something has come adrift with our US ranks. Using Open Site Explorer not one competitor listed has a higher domain authority than our site, page authority, domain links you name it but they sit there in first page. Sorry the above is a little bit of frustration, this question is not impulsive I have sat for weeks analyzing causes and effects but cannot see why this disparity is happening between the 2 country ranks when it has never happened for this length of time before. Ironically we are still number one in the United States for a keyword phrase which I moved away from over a month ago and do not refer to this phrase at all on our index page!! Bizarre. Granted, site link demotion may have no correlation to the KW ranking impact but looking at activities carried out on the site and timing of the page crawling. This is the only sizable factor I can identify that could be the cause. Oh! and the SEOMOZ 'On-Page Optimization Tool' reports that the home page gets an 'A' for this KW term. I have however this week commented out the canonical tag for the moment in the index page header to see if this has any effect. Why? Because as this was another (if not minor) change I employed to get the site to an 'A' credit with the tool. Any ideas, help appreciated as to what could be causing the rank differences. One final note the North American ranks initially were high, circa 11-12th but then consequently dropped away to 4th page but not the UK rankings, they witnessed no impact. Sorry one final thing, the rank in the US is my statistical outlier, using Google Analytics I have an average rank position of about 3 across all countries where our company appears for this term. Include the US and it pushes the average to 8/9th. Thanks David
Technical SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
Google indexing less url's then containded in my sitemap.xml
My sitemap.xml contains 3821 urls but Google (webmaster tools) indexes only 1544 urls. What may be the cause? There is no technical problem. Why does Google index less URLs then contained in my sitemap.xml?
Technical SEO | | Juist0 -
External Linking & Your sites Link juice
Hey guys, quick question. Does a page lose link juice when it gives link juice? If I link to an outside site, do I lose that same amount of link juice or is it just applied to there site and not removed from mine? I understand that linking to a competitor can in turn help him and hurt me (if he then is seen as more relevant than me to google) but does it have a direct relation to hurting/removing my page link juice? Hope this all makes sense. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
Are URL's with trailing slash seen as two different URLs
Hello, http://www.example.com and http://ww.example.com/ Are these seen as two different URL's ? Just as with www or non www ? Or it doesn't make any difference ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050
