Rel=canonical
-
Hi, there is something puzzling us about the rel=canonical reports...
On the general report that is generated after the system crawls our site, we have blue flags on the rel=canonical tag, but the flags don't actually specify exactly what is wrong, they just say: "Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical." so we presumed that we should take the rel=canonical tag out of our pages, and after we did so, we noticed that the on-page-report-card (the one that shows up when you run the keyword page optimization tool from the research tools) says (close to the bottom of the report) that we should have 1 canonical tag on each page.
So right now we're confused, the general website crawl report flags the rel canonical as being bad and then the on page report flags not having them, we don't really know what to do, should we keep the rel=canonical or not? We are using wordpress to power our site, wordpress has a built-in system for generating the rel canonical for each page, I've checked that and the tags are being generated properly, but we have no idea why the general website report flags them in blue, the error message is not too comprehensive.
Any help or information you could provide would be much appreciated. Our website is taxproblem.org thanks.
-
I'm not sure what the deal is with blue flags and report cards, but if you have duplicate pages, you should either use the 301 redirect or the rel=canonical tag. My guess is that maybe you had a rel=canonical tag on a page that pointed to the same page, so maybe the crawling tool took that to be some kind of error? I don't know, but make sure your duplicate pages are either redirected to the original or that they use a rel=canonical tag to specify the original, and don't worry about any reports that are simply notifying you of the purpose of a canonical tag.
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
-
Duplicate Content even when Canonical is used
Hi Everyone, Our website uses the Magento platform which is notorious for creating duplicate content. I tried to make sure that all the duplicate content it creates should be "canonicalized" to the correct page. While looking through the moz Page Diagnostics I see that I have 1003(!) pages of duplicate content. When I downloaded the csv I saw that over 95% of them had a canonical url. Does that mean there is really no issue but moz analytics is still reading it as duplicate content and titles? Is there an issue with them being canonicals as opposed to being redirected? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | EcomLkwd1 -
I have double-checked the rel canonical is properly employed on our page but the On Page Grader says it's not working?
I have double-checked the rel canonical is properly employed on our page but the On Page Grader says it's not working Here is the URL - http://www.solidconcepts.com/industries/aerospace-parts-manufacturing/ What is wrong with how we are doing things?
Moz Pro | | StratasysDirectManufacturing0 -
Update in Moz spider/tools?? Flagging duplicate content / ignoring canonical
Hi all, Has there been an update in the SEOmoz crawling software? We now have thousands of dupe content/page title warnings for paginated product page URLs that have correctly formatted canonicals. e.g. http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/tweed-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx ... has following pages with identical content that have been flagged: http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/olive-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx?p=true&rspage=4 http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/olive-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx?p=true&rspage=6 http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/olive-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx?p=true&rspage=4 ..plus 4 more URL's. But they all have canonical set. There's even a notice at the bottom of report that tells us there's a canonical set to http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/tweed-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx What gives, SEOmoz ?? Thanks Michael
Moz Pro | | LawrenceNeal0 -
Canonical URLs and Duplicate Page Content
My website (doctor directory) is getting a lot of duplicate page content & duplicate page title warnings from SEOmoz. The pages that are getting the warnings are doctors profiles which can be accessed at three different URLs. Problem is this should be handled by the canonical tag on the pages. So example below, all three open the same page: https://www.arzttermine.de/arzt/dr-sara-danesh/ https://www.arzttermine.de/arzt/dr-sara-danesh/gkv https://www.arzttermine.de/arzt/dr-sara-danesh/pkv Here's our canonical tag (on line 34): rel="canonical" href="http://www.arzttermine.de/arzt/dr-sara-danesh" /> So why is SEO moz crawling the page? We are getting hundreds of errors from this - and yet Google doesn't have any of the duplicate URLs indexed...
Moz Pro | | thomashillard0 -
Why do I keep getting "more than one canonical URL tag" on-page factor when, in fact, there is always only one?
The following are pages that SEOMOZ says have "more than one canonical URL tag" but they all have only one. Can someone help me understand this?http://www.lasercenterny.com/Laser-Hair-Removal-Binghamton/tabid/1950/Default.aspxhttp://www.lasercenterny.com/Hair-Removal-Binghamton-NY/tabid/1949/Default.aspxhttp://www.lasercenterny.com/Hair-Removal-Binghamton/tabid/1948/Default.aspx
Moz Pro | | SmartWebPros0 -
Can overly dynamic URLs be overcome with canonical meta tags?
I tried searching for questions regarding dynamic URLs and canonical tags, but I couldn't find anything s hopefully this hasn't been covered. There are a large number of overly dynamic URLs reported in our site crawl (>7,000). I haven't looked at each of these, but most of these either have a canonical meta tag or have are indicated as FOLLOW, NO INDEX pages. Will these be enough to overcome any negative SEO impact that may come from overly dynamic URLs? We are down to almost 0 critical errors and this is now the biggest problem reported by the site crawl after too many on page links.
Moz Pro | | afmaury0 -
Have I got Rel Canonical or not?
I have 180 warnings of rel=canonical. The exact wording says this: Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical. First - I don't know what that means - is that a good thing of bad thing? Second - Because of the above question, Im not sure if I have it or should have or it do have it but shouldn't. Which should I have? What should it look like? How do I fix it? Also, I have notices that say 'issue: 301 redirect' and a line about what a 301 redirect is. Again, do I have it, or not have it, should I have it? Do I have it but shouldn't?
Moz Pro | | borderbound0 -
Rel Canonical issues for two urls sharing same IP address
Our client built a wordpress site on url A, then opted for a better url B. Rather than moving all the wordpress files/website over to the new url B, they just contacted GoDaddy, who hosted BOTH urls under the same IP address. When I do a term target on url B, I'm flagged for rel canonical use. I can only get a B grade for each keyword. (I've also tried using url A, but I get the same flag and B grade results). I'm not sure if this set-up will thwart our seo efforts for the site, because only the homepage comes up when you type in url B anyway. Every subsequent page displays the original url A. Somewhere, wordpress is also adding a rel canonical link on the homepage source to url A, too, which we can't seem to edit. So, question is: is it ok to leave this set up as is with both urls hosted on the same IP address, or should we move the whole site over to the desired url B? Thanks much!
Moz Pro | | GravitateOnline0