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.
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
-
Very simple,
Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm
I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original.
Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
-
For all practical purposes, Google doesn't seem to index pages where it recognizes the canonical as legitimate. You won't find them in a "site:" query, "cache:" command, etc. Google may call that a "filter", but once it's reached that point, the URL is as good as de-indexed. There may be subtle, technical distinctions, but the end result is virtually the same.
-
Not quite. Canonical (per Matt Cutts) is considered a hint as to what the real page is. It doesn't stop the duplicate page from being crawled or indexed (a page that isn't indexed will not show up anywhere in Google for any query), it prevents the duplicate page from winning the duplicate race (i.e. if you don't pick a winner, Google will pick one for you).
-
Thanks Tom (and everyone else for the replies),
So if someone linked to a page with a querystring Google wouldn't index that page because the canonical tag is pointing to a url which doesn't have that query in?
I like the scraped part as well, that in itself makes it worth while.
-
Newegg.com uses this because they have affiliates, searches and numerous other things that affect their query strings.
Remember that ANY change to the query string is seen as a new page. So
domain.com?page=a&link=1
domain.com?page=a&link=2are considered separate pages, even if they return the same content.
Canonical is used to determine which duplicate page "wins" the index race. All other versions are considered duplicate and, thus, devalued.
-
There's a couple of reasons why people might want to do this (and why I do with all my websites)
First of all, the page/site might be scraped and replicated by a bot, particularly if it's an authority domain. Having your canonicals in place to begin with will help reduce the chance of your content being seen as duplicate, should a bot scrape your site.
Another reason would be if a website might generate any additional versions of the page through queries, eg www.domain.com/page.php?query2 - Having a self referring canonical will also tell Google that you want to rank the URL without any other queries, which can help prevent any of those queries appearing in the Google index and/or SERPs.
-
Hi,
I am not an expert, so please do not take my answer very seriously. What you mention, of making a canonical tag pointing to the same URL, looks fine. In my understanding, canonical tags were created to tell the search engines that a page is the right one, even if the system you are using creates address that could look like duplicate content. For example, if you are using a Content Management System like wordpress or Joomla, you could have the following:
-
http://domain.com/date/month/page1 and so on.
Search engines (again, I am not sure, I am just a newbee), could think all this pages are duplicate content, and could penalize you for this. But if you indicate with the canonical tag that the right url is http://domain.com/page1, then you are safe.
I hope somebody with more experience could help you better,
Best Regards,
Daniel
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
-
Should we add our company's name in page title tag or not?
We have been adding our company (Townscript) name in all the page titles. For example, in an event page of Lucknow Conclave: www.townscript.com/lucknowconclave the page title is Lucknow Conclave | Alexis Society | Townscript I read somewhere that it's not necessary to put your company's name in the title tag. Is it right? Please help!
On-Page Optimization | | sanchitmalik0 -
Home page and category page target same keyword
Hi there, Several of our websites have a common problem - our main target keyword for the homepage is also the name of a product category we have within the website. There are seemingly two solutions to this problem, both of which not ideal: Do not target the keyword with the homepage. However, the homepage has the most authority and is our best shot at getting ranked for the main keyword. Reword and "de-optimise" the category page, so it doesn't target the keyword. This doesn't work well from UX point of view as the category needs to describe what it is and enable visitors to navigate to it. Anybody else gone through a similar conundrum? How did you end up going about it? Thanks Julian
On-Page Optimization | | tprg0 -
H1 Tags on Volusion Product Pages
So I'm working with a client who has no heading tags on his site and I'm wondering if there is an ideal method to implementing these on the product pages specifically, as the wording I ideally want to specify is is the product title, which i can't really code with an H1. Has anyone run into this issue? If so, what was your solution? Also, how vital are these heading tags on the product pages, anyways? If the Volusion SEO expert could chime in, that would be much appreciated. Thanks everyone!
On-Page Optimization | | BrandLabs0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
Can I use the first sentence of my page content as a meta description tag as well?
I just want to copy my content on the page and use the first or as well the second sentence of the content self for my meta description tag. Is that OK? Or should the Meta description tag be different?
On-Page Optimization | | paulinap19830 -
Is there a SEO penalty for multi links on same page going to same destination page?
Hi, Just a quick note. I hope you are able to assist. To cut a long story short, on the page below http://www.bookbluemountains.com.au/ -> Features Specials & Packages (middle column) we have 3 links per special going to the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | daveupton
1. Header is linked
2. Click on image link - currently with a no follow
3. 'More info' under the description paragraph is linked too - currently with a no follow Two arguments are as follows:
1. The reason we do not follow all 3 links is to reduce too many links which may appear spammy to Google. 2. Counter argument:
The point above has some validity, However, using no follow is basically telling the search engines that the webmaster “does not trust or doesn’t take responsibility” for what is behind the link, something you don’t want to do within your own website. There is no penalty as such for having too many links, the search engines will generally not worry after a certain number.. nothing that would concern this business though. I would suggest changing the no follow links a.s.a.p. Could you please advise thoughts. Many thanks Dave Upton [long signature removed by staff]0 -
Title tag for category page
I'd like to know your views on the best approach for title tags for category pages for ecommerce sites. 3 examples A) Category name | Free delivery on $50 purchase | Brand name B) Discover best "category name" on brand name C) Category Name | 1st Keyword, 2nd keyword | Brand name Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | walidalsaqqaf0 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0