301 Redirect and Canonical link tag pointing in opposite directions!
-
I'm working on a site which redirects the non-WWW version to WWW version
so, for example https://website.com/page redirects to https://www.website.com/page
However, canonical link tags have been set up on the page - pointing back to the non-WWW
so for example
Q - is this going to cause issues and should the canonical be updated to the same version as the redirect?
-
As Brett and Gaston said, this is not ideal, but also not the worst thing. You'll probably have both non-WWW and WWW versions rank for awhile, then Google will start ignoring your canonicals.
As Gaston said, it's pretty simple to change canonicals - I would recommend doing that. Otherwise, you're showing Google that your canonicals don't match your actual site, and they may start ignoring them in the future. It's worth keeping your site structure clean!
Best,
Kristina
-
Canonicals are not absolute directives, so Google will eventually sort out which of the two signals is more important. My guess is that the redirect takes precedence, because if they displayed the canonical to a user in search, it would be displaying a URL that sends users through a redirect which is a poor experience and they take pains not to do that.
When there are confusing signals like this out there, Google will do its best to sort out these issues and John Mueller has repeatedly stated "we do a pretty good job" at figuring it out, but he almost always adds a disclaimer that it's "better" to have a less confusing structure.
In plain english, it's not a catastrophic error, but it's something you need to clean up as part of your optimization efforts.
-
Hi there!
Yes, it could cause short term issues. Google will not understand which version you want to be shown in the results even though the user experience is the correct.
There is not that much work to update the canonical tags in order to be the same version.Best luck.
GR
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
-
Selectively 301 redirects
Hi there: We are developing a pretty typical 301 redirection strategy. We basically are moving blog posts from a former sub-domain to the top level of our new designed site. We've pulled a site crawl of the old sub-domain and want to make sure we redirect any posts with a significant backlink profile to their current counterparts. Most other posts are just going to be redirected to the main 'front door' of our new blog. Is there a way to selectively redirect a certain number of posts and then 'globally' redirect everything else to a single URL? I would assume this would be a pretty common task, but can't find an easy way to do what we want to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Blog tags are creating excessive duplicate content...should we use rel canonicals or 301 redirects?
We are having an issue with our cilent's blog creating excessive duplicate content via blog tags. The duplicate webpages from tags offer absolutely no value (we can't even see the tag). Should we just 301 redirect the tagged page or use a rel canonical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications0 -
301 Redirect of subdomain?
Fellow Mozzers, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around a redirect issue and thought it was worth posing the question to the Moz community. I did a search first but couldn't find the exact answer I was looking for. How does a 301 redirect work when you redirect a sub domain example.homepage.com to www.homepage.com but you keep the sub directories of example.homepage.com/page-1 active and are trying to rank them? I'm dealing with a current project where this is happening and this doesn't make sense to me, to redirect the subdomain if you're also trying to rank/create search traffic for pages, sub directories on example.homepage.com. This also get's into the debate of if a sub domain site is viewed as it's own website and therefore has to rank itself. If this is true, it seems like we're kind of killing the authority of the site by redirecting it. Additionally, www.homepage.com has a much stronger link profile than example.homepage.com I hope this makes sense. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SMG-Texas0 -
Multiple 301 Redirects for the Same Page
Hi Mozzers, What happens if I have a trail of 301 redirects for the same page? For example,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
SiteA.com/10 --> SiteA.com/11 --> SiteA.com/13 --> SiteA.com/14 I know I lose a little bit of link juice by 301 redirecting.
The question is, would the link juice look like this for the example above? 100% --> 90% --> 81% -->72.9%
Or just 100% -----------------------------------------> 90% Does this link juice refer to juice from inbound links or links between internal pages on my site? Thanks!0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0 -
Probelms w/ 301 Redirects
I am trying to 301 redirect my old site to the new site (under the same domain. Most of the 404 urls are 301 redirects from 404 pages but they are still able to redirect. I need help understanding why I cannot redirect half of my list. <colgroup><col width="636"> <col width="342"> <col width="64"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia
| OLD URL | 301 To: | Status |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/groups.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/groups.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/entertainment/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/services.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/all_inclusive.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/galeria/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/visor.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/los-picapiedra/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/outside-us-telephone-listing.php | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/restaurantes/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/reuniones-eventos/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/grupos.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/spa/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/terms-condition.php | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/gallery/beach.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/gallery/dining.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/gastronomy.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/gallery/pools.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/lowest-rate.php | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/services/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/services.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/services/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/terms-condition.php | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html | done |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/galeria/piscinas.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/galeria/playa.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/galeria/restaurantes.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/prensa/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/prensa/family-facilities-amenities.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/prensa/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/prensa/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/family-facilities-amenities.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/accommodations/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/habitaciones.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/dining/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/entertainment/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/events/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/flintstones/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/visor.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/beach.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/dining.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/pools.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/royal/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicio-real.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/sitemap.html | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html |
|
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/spa/ | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html |
| gastronomia.html0 -
Not allowing me 301 Redirect
I am trying redirect my old site to my new site, both on the same domain. For one reason or another, I am having a hard time redirecting the some of the old urls to the new site. Please let me know how I can fix this issue. Below are the following old urls that are not allowing me to redirect: <colgroup><col width="636"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/accommodations/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/dining/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/entertainment/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/events/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/flintstones/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/beach.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/dining.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/pools.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/ |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
| http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |0 -
Setting up of 301 redirects
Good morning all, As part of the analysis of our website, we have realised that we are diluting our keyword strength in a particular area by having multiple zones all targeting the same keyword. We have decided to combine these zones into one, and set up 301 redirects so that the remaining zone gets the benefit of the other zones' link juice. When setting up a 301 redirect from zone "X" to zone "Y" say, do I need to keep all of the content in zone X, or should I remove all content before the redirect is set up? Does zone Y still get the benefit of zone X's link juice if the content is removed? Many thanks Guy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Horizon0