Canonical and Sitemap issue
-
Hi all,
I was told that I could change my homepage Canonical tag to match that of my XML sitemap, this sitemap is being generated for me automatically and shows the homepage as e.g. https://www.mysite.com/index.html, yet my Canonical tag has been set to https://www.mysite.com.
Google currently shows as https://www.mysite.com/ being indexed, but https://www.mysite.com/index.html is not currently displayed in search results.
Can someone please tell me if I should change the Canonical to the index.html version, or if I should do nothing, or remove the Canonical tag altogether?
Thank you for looking.
-
I agree with the others. Given "https://www.mysite.com/index.html is not currently displayed in search results", in all likelihood it is being redirected to https://www.mysite.com (and should be). So you don't want to change the canonical to the index.html version of the page only to have it redirected back to https://www.mysite.com. It'll unnecessarily slow the site and might even create a loop.
-
Thank you both, I'll leave it as it is, I'm not able to edit the XML my side sadly.
-
Yes, that's a good point. Canonicals are suggestions for Google, not commands.
-
I see your point, and don't worry about it. Sitemaps help Google find all of your pages and can provide certain other information, but they are not required so no need to overthink them. In general Google is pretty good at finding what it needs to find. And it will certainly find your homepage.
-
I agree with Linda here, I would leave the canonical tag as is. It is a cleaner, better looking URL for the SERPs. If anything, manually update the XML file to reflect the canonical version of the homepage. The main purpose of the XML sitemap is to help search engines crawl and index a website. The homepage is going to be the most frequently crawled page so Google will not have a problem finding it.
Also, do not worry about Google disliking the canonical pointing to .com instead of /index.html. If Google determines that is not the ideal URL for it's index it will ignore the canonical tag.
-
Hi,
Thanks, basically I was concerned that Google may not like that https://www.mysite.com/ was not in the sitemap, yet index.html was and the canonical was pointing to https://www.mysite.com.
If that makes any sense....
-
What are you trying to achieve? Do you particularly want the index.html version to be the canonical? The https://www.mysite.com/ version is more straightforward and what most people would expect your homepage URL to be.
Unless there is some pressing reason to do otherwise, I'd leave it the way it is.
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 Question (aspx, XML, HTML)
Hey everyone! My company uses a tool called SEOQuake. We are trying to hit all of their "checkmarks" when we run a diagnosis for them. One of the only things we can not figure out how to pass is their section for Site Compliance ---> XML Sitemaps. Our client's websites that we have built are all using .aspx URL structures, and when I view them, it clearly states that it is an XML file. It has this text written at the top of the .aspx page: "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." Does anyone know what is happening here?
Web Design | | TaylorRHawkins
Thank you!1 -
Site structure and Visual Sitemaps
Aside from mind mapping software are there any tools ( recommended) to build a visual sitemap of the internal linking structure of a URL? I've been trying to 'show' clients the structure of a website as it pertains to internal and external links. Here is one I've tried it's "Close" - http://site-visualizer.com/ . I've been using the excel export function, import into mind meister and building it. It's a teeny bit time consuming for large websites. Site structure I feel is a valuable portion of SEO and a down and dirty visual explanation would be great. Don't get me wrong, it offers other benefits as well- it's just I'd like to free up the time it takes. Thank you in advance. Screen shots are available on the website of the organization.
Web Design | | TammyWood0 -
Is there an issue if we show our old mobile site to Google & new site to users
Hi, We have our existing mobile site that contains interlinking in footer & content and new mobile site that does not have interlinking. We will show existing mobile site to google crawler & new mobile site to users. Will this be taken as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site will have same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Sitemap created on client's Joomla site but it is not showing up on site reports as existing? (Thumbs Up To Answers)
I am working with a web developer who built our client's site in Joomla. I seem to have a lot of issues with Joomla based sites. Any how, the site is www.pitgearusa.com and when we run site reports it is showing there is no xml sitemap. However he used a popular Joomla plugin for sitemaps called Xmap. Here is their url: http://www.jooxmap.com/ Can anyone provide any advice on what the website developer needs to do in order for the xml sitemap to function and "show up" on reports? Thanks Mashed Up
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
We mapped 301's, uploaded htacces, submitted sitemap and still TANKED after redesign?
Hi All, We had some great rankings on store.jrdunn.com since 2006 and we switched to just http://jrdunn.com with cleaner url structures about 13 days ago. We were on Volusion now Magento. We mapped out a couple of thousand of 301's and carefully choose very similar landing pages on the new site. Uploaded an htcaccess file and submitted sitemap in GWT. We have been correcting 404's and watching GWT like a hawk. We dropped on several almost all of our great terms from page one to page 14 or 15 on the new site. We don't even rank yet on our own brand terms ?!?. ORGANIC traffic has dropped more than 50%. The only thing in our plan that we couldn't execute was using the "we moved" tool in GWT because they don't allow switches from subdomains to be entered. Bummer! Do you think missing that one thing caused the plummet? In retrospect perhaps we changed too many things at once ie hosting, cms and going down to root url. Anyways, I don't know what we can do from here but we'd sure be silly not to ask! Anybody's suggestions or past experiences with this situation would be huge! Thanks so much in advance, Sean
Web Design | | seandunn0 -
Im having duplicate content issues in wordpress
all of my pages are working fine. but i added my sitemap to my footer in my website and when i click on my blog from my footer it takes me to the homepage. so now im having duplicate content for two diff urls. ive tried adding a rel=canonical and a 301 redirect to the blog page but it doesnt resolve the problem. also, when i go to my footer and click blog. after it brings me to the homepage ill try to click on my pages from the original bar at the top of my screen and it will bring me to the right pages. but it will have the same blog url in the search bar even when im on other pages. other than that all of my pages in my footer and in my homepage toolbar work fine. its just that one particular problem with the blog page in the footer and how it stays with the same blog url on every page after i click the blog in the footer. can someone please help. im using yoast and idk if i should disable it or what.
Web Design | | ClearVisionDesign0 -
Correct Canonical Reference
Aloha, This is probably a noob question, but here we go: I got a CMS e-commerce, which does not allow static "rel=canonical" declaration in the header and can only work with third-party modules (xml packages) that append "rel=canonical" to all pages dynamic pages within the URL. As a result, I have pages I'm declaring incomplete rel="canonical" as such: Instead of: rel="canonical" src="www.domainname.com/category.aspx" I get: rel="canonical" src="/category.aspx" Coincidentally (or not), after the implementation of the canonical tag, pages that were continuously increasing in rankings started dropping, and, within a week, disappeared from the index completely. Could the drop be a result of my canonical links pointing to incomplete URLs? If so, by fixing this issue, do I stand a chance of recovering my pages' SERPs?
Web Design | | dimanyc0 -
Custom URL's with Bigcommerce Issue (Is it worth it?)
We're building out a store in Bigcommerce, who for all intensive purposes is perfect for SEO besides the fact that you can not change the URL's to be custom. My question is, does this kill the SEO value of bigcommerce, despite everything else being great? So for example the URL's for a category page would be something like this www.mysite.com/categories/keyword and the product URL's are pulled in by product name, so product URL's could be something like www.mysite.com/products/Product-Description-Long-223.html (notice the words will be capitalized and their is no way to remove the trailing .html) I could go with Interspire (the liscenced version of Bigcommerce) or Magento so I can custom edit this stuff. But then its a lot more work for my employee's on the buildout.
Web Design | | iAnalyst.com0