Absolute vs. Relative Canonical Links
-
Hi Moz Community,
I have a client using relative links for their canonicals (vs. absolute)
Google appears to be following this just fine, but bing, etc. are still sending organic traffic to the non-canonical links.
It's a drupal setup.
Anyone have advice? Should I recommend that all canonical links be absolute? They are strapped for resources, so this would be a PITA if it won't make a difference.
Thanks
-
thanks, I agree. I appreciate your help.
-
Hi,
I'd definitely recommend using absolute URLs for canonical tags. Part of their benefit is preventing duplication due to www vs. non-www and https/http issues. If you're using relative, you don't get to specify protocol or www preference.
Additionally, you don't want to only solve for Google. They've obviously got the largest share or organic search, but that other search engines should still index/crawl content accordingly.
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
-
Links
Hi 64% of our links come from a .com website and only 30% from .co.uk. We only do business in the UK should I continue with the .com links as they are easier to source. Does this hurt my SEO efforts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Do you lose link juice when stripping query strings with canonicals?
It is well known that when page A canonicals to page B, some link juice is lost (similar to a 301). So imagine I have the following pages: Page A: www.mysite.com/main-page which has the tag: <link rel="canonical" href="http: www.mysite.com="" main-page"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:> Page B: www.mysite.com/main-page/sub-page which is a variation of Page A, so it has a tag I know that links to page B will lose some of their SEO value, as if I was 301ing from page B to page A. Question: What about this link: www.mysite.com/main-page?utm_medium=moz&utm_source=qa&utm_campaign=forum Will it also lose link juice since the query string is being stripped by the canonical tag? In terms of SEO, is this like a redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
I get warnings for overly dynamic urls, but have canonical links in place.
Hi, Seomoz gives me warnings for overly dynamic urls. This is mostly caused by a crumbtrail system. I have a canonical link in the header for all the urls I receive warnings on, should I still worry about this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mooij0 -
Why the sudden link drop?
A the end of November I am showing that our total links were 118k. Current links are 22k. We changed sites early November so that was about three weeks before. What would cause the drop of about 100k links? Or where should I start investigating?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Which index page should I canonical to?
Hello! I'm doing a routine clean up of my code and had a question about the canonical tag. On the index page, I have the following: I have never put any thought into which index path is the best to use. http://www.example.com http://www.example.com/ http://www.example.com/index.php Could someone shed some light on this for me? Does it make a difference? Thanks! Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan_Phillips1 -
How should I handle these links?
I recently purchased a site which is in the same niche as my personal blog. MANY of the keywords which I want both sites to rank for, they are already ranking well for (Eg I rank #1 with one site and #5 for the other). I haven't started linking the two sites to each other yet (waiting to announce the acquisition before I do). I have 2 questions for you all... How powerful do you think linking between these sites could be? How do you think I should handle the linking between these two sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroAndJobu0 -
Should I be using rel canonical here?
I am reorganizing the data on my informational site in a drilldown menu. So, here's an example. One the home page are several different items. Let's say you clicked on "Back Problems". Then, you would get a menu that says: Disc problems, Pain relief, paralysis issues, see all back articles. Each of those pages will have a list of articles that suit. Some articles will appear on more than one page. Should I be worried about these pages being partially duplicates of each other? Should I use rel-canonical to make the root page for each section the one that is indexed. I'm thinking no, because I think it would be good to have all of these pages indexed. But then, that's why I'm asking!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0 -
Canonical and optimization
Hi, I was thinking: If I had 4 pages, each of them optimized for an especific keyword, but set a canonical url to another page, would this another page rank for the 5 specific keywords? Ex: Page 1- Shoes
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroVillalobos
Page 2- Snickers
Page 3- Socks
Page 4- Feet
All set the canonical url to Page 5 Page 5 will rank for all this four keywords?0