Canonical and Alternate Advice
-
At the moment for most of our sites, we have both a desktop and mobile version of our sites. They both show the same content and use the same URL structure as each other. The server determines whether if you're visiting from either device and displays the relevant version of the site.
We are in a predicament of how to properly use the canonical and alternate rel tags. Currently we have a canonical on mobile and alternate on desktop, both of which have the same URL because both mobile and desktop use the same as explained in the first paragraph.
Would the way of us doing it at the moment be correct?
-
That would normally be the case but not tonight.
LOL, I am picking up a lot of the UK Q&A I will be at BrightonSEO and search love London if any of you guys will be in the area I'd love to grab a pint?
sincerely,
Thomas
-
The reason we answered 'quickly' by the way is because we are in the UK - you were still in bed lol!
-
There is only ONE URL that is the point.
If they share the same URL then you only have one page of code so ONE canonical
Regards
Nigel
-
Sorry Nigel
was not trying to make this more complicated was just trying to make sure that we were all on the same page.
FYI if you need a method of adding the rel canonical to your website quickly you can use Google tag manager or if you want to add to the header
https://support.stackpath.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001445283-EdgeRules-Adding-a-Canonical-Header
-
So a self referencing canonical on both mobile and desktop versions of the site, regardless if they chuck out two version with the same content?
-
Hi JH
I'm sure Thomas means well with his multiple complicated posts but all of this is totally unnecessary.
Both sites are serving the same URL
You can't put a rel=alternative because there is nothing to point to.
Just put a self-referencing canonical. I said that 2 hours ago!
That is all.
Regards Nigel
-
Use a self-referencing canonical
https://blog.seoprofiler.com/google-recommend-self-referencing-canonical-tags/
Please let me know if you want me to remove the image below?
you can use this one if needed http://bseo.io/c1vMSv
-
I've been told to pass on a URL, thanks for your help Thomas!
-
Hey man I understand is a big deal
could you do me a huge favor and run your site through screaming frog SEO spider send me a couple of pages with the domains whited out so I can tell you 100% what to do in this situation because I am basing this on what you have told me and honestly I would like to look at what a tool can show me and that will tell me what I need to do.
Or you can tell me if the mobile version of the site hit's Google's index yes or no?
respectfully,
Tom
-
So both mobile and desktop require a self referencing canonical(in both headers)?
Sorry for the questions, just need to make sure! It's a very touchy subject!
-
The single self-referencing URL will work.
-
What URLs are you using with the “alternate” tag on?
You said
”1. We have multiple brand sites, that have a similar setup. They all have mobile and desktop versions of the sites running on the same URL, both of which show the same content.2. The server determines whether if you're on a desktop or mobile devices using the header information, and points the user to the site relevant files for the given device.”
thats Dynamic serving same URL
Dynamic serving is a setup where the server responds with different HTML (and CSS) on the same URL depending on which user agent requests the page (mobile, tablet, or desktop).
that would NOT give you the mobile or m.example.com & www.example.com different URLs
**But If you do have a different m.example.com & www.example.com URLs you should use this code or XML site maps **
for different URLs use this:
Annotations in the HTML
On the desktop page (http://www.example.com/page-1), add the following annotation:
<linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<="" span="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only>
On the mobile page (http://m.example.com/page-1), the required annotation should be:
<linkrel="canonical"href="http: www.example.com="" page-1"=""></linkrel="canonical"href="http:>
This rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.
Or
Annotations in sitemaps
We support including the rel="alternate"annotation for the desktop pages in sitemaps like this:
<urlsetxmlns="http: www.sitemaps.org="" schemas="" sitemap="" 0.9"<="" span="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<loc>http://www.example.com/page-1/</loc>
<xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<="" span="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"/></xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only></urlsetxmlns="http:>You should have the same URL on mobile and desktop
You should have the same rel canonical tag on your URLs unless and this is a big unless you're talking about using Google AMP?
If the URL you want to be indexed is the same URL point everything to that URL if that makes it easier to understand.
respectfully,
Tom
-
Just to confirm, are we suppose to have a canonical on desktop and mobile or just desktop?
This would mean removing the alternate?
Want to confirm everything before iterating this across to others.
We are not using AMP, just a standard site setup.
-
Unless you are using AMP?
Then you would add
Linking pages with
In order to solve this problem, we add information about the AMP page to the non-AMP page and vice versa, in the form of tags in the .
Add the following to the non-AMP page:
<link rel="amphtml" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/amp/document.html">
And this to the AMP page:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/full/document.html">
are you using AMP pages?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
https://www.ampproject.org/docs/fundamentals/discovery
I hope that helps you if not please let me know.
Respectfully,
Tom
-
Cool, that's what I thought when I heard your description I just wanted to be very thorough because sometimes you get very little information and I appreciate you letting me know that.
dynamic serving URLs are identical to each other so you should have a self-referencing canonical tag because the URL does not change the real canonical tag just decides what should be in the index and the same URL.
You're Rel canonical should be something like this example below
Example URL https://www.example.com/example-url/
because the end URL is the same and URL that you want to be indexed in Google you want to be certain that you have a self-referencing URL to prevent query strings and other things like that and you do not need to point a URL to an identical URL you just need a self-referencing canonical if that makes sense.
See: https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/
I hope that is of help,
Tom
-
Hi,
I can't give off too much information as it's not my call, but I can answer your questions without mentioning the brands.
1. We have multiple brand sites, that have a similar setup. They all have mobile and desktop versions of the sites running on the same URL, both of which show the same content.
2. The server determines whether if you're on a desktop or mobile devices using the header information, and points the user to the site relevant files for the given device.
3. Our sites would quite clearly fit in the dynamic serving category.
We have 301 redirects on none www to www and http to https.
-
This is the correct solution!
-
The URLs are identical it is just the content that is served that may be slightly different.
Since you can only specify one canonical for each URL it makes no difference. Just self-reference and that is it.
If you had to different URLs then it would be an issue where you woudl need a rel=alternative so there is nothing to worry about.
Regards
Nigel
-
You guys are fast I was going to answer this and had to do some other things but let me weigh in on couple things.
as you said
“We are in a predicament of how to properly use the canonical and alternate rel tags**. Currently we have a canonical on mobile and alternate on desktop, both of which have the same URL because both mobile and desktop use the same as explained in the first paragraph.”**
so what you’re saying is that you have a dynamic site so you don’t need to add “alternate"media” tags to the site.
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/dynamic-serving
As it is not immediately apparent in this setup that the site alters the HTML for mobile user agents (the mobile content is "hidden" when crawled with a desktop user agent), it’s recommend that the server send a hint to request that Googlebot for smartphones also crawl the page, and thus discover the mobile content. This hint is implemented using the Vary HTTP header.
**you don’t need this **
Annotations in the HTML
On the desktop page (
http://www.example.com/page-1
), add the following annotation:<code dir="ltr"><linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<br="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only></code>
On the mobile page (
http://m.example.com/page-1
), the required annotation should be:<code dir="ltr"><linkrel="canonical"href="http: www.example.com="" page-1"=""></linkrel="canonical"href="http:></code>
This
rel="canonical"
tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.Annotations in sitemaps
We support including the
rel="alternate"
annotation for the desktop pages in sitemaps like this:<code dir="ltr"><urlsetxmlns="http: www.sitemaps.org="" schemas="" sitemap="" 0.9"<br="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <url><loc>http://www.example.com/page-1/</loc> <xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<br="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"/></xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only></url></urlsetxmlns="http:></code>
The required
rel="canonical"
tag on the mobile URL should still be added to the mobile page's HTML.**to be sure **
Are you willing to share your domain with us? Or one domain?
-
We're talking about multiple websites that all have the identical site structure or at least mobile and desktop site structure?
-
Your server is making the change for you?
-
Would you be kind enough to install this plug-in on chrome in order for you to show a couple examples of the canonical and the URL?
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/portents-seo-page-review/babgchcegnkbiojmdpnoilficladccfm?hl=en-US
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-redirect-trace/nnpljppamoaalgkieeciijbcccohlpoh?hl=en
In addition, would you be kind enough to run your site through the two tools here ( 100% free and very easy to use)
If you would not mind doing this and sending screenshots it would mean a lot to us and getting your canonical's straightened out.
screenshots https://snag.gy/ then upload to http://imgur.com/
everything is on the same server I'm assuming?
Of the three below how would you categorize your site?
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/dynamic-serving
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/responsive-design
Respectfully,
Tom
-
-
Would this mean we need canonical only on desktop or mobile site?
-
You are right - you could only use teh rel=alternate if there was an m. version or similar
Regards
Nigel
-
The self referencing canonical advice was solid and I 100% agree with it. The rel=alternate advice, I felt would cause problems (IMO). But as we all know, fiddly issues like this are highly subjective
-
Then there is no problem simply putting a self-referencing canonical. There is in effect no mobile version as there is a single URL so no need for a rel=alternate.
It's an even easier solution. Well, there isn't a problem in the first place.
rel=alternate is only necessary if you have two different URLs! The fact they are the same takes away the problem.
Regards
Nigel
-
Your problem is that you have two different sites loading on the same URL. If you are returning both the mobile and desktop / laptop site on the same URL, you would be expected to be using responsive design. In-fact, you may have re-invented another different way to implement responsive design which is probably, slightly less fluid yet slightly more efficient :')
Since your mobile and desktop pages both reside on exactly the same URL, I'd test the page(s) with this tool (the mobile friendly tool) and this tool (the page-speed insights tool). If Google correctly views your site as mobile friendly, and if within PageSpeed insights Google is correctly differentiating between the mobile and desktop site versions (check the mobile and desktop tabs) then both URLs should canonical to themselves (self referencing canonical) and no alternate tag should be used or deployed. Google will misread the alternate tag, which points to itself - as an error. That tag is to be used when your separate mobile site (page) exists on a separate URL, like an 'm.' subdomain or something like that
Imagine you are Googlebot. You are crawling in desktop mode, load the desktop URL version and find that the page says, it (itself) is also the mobile page. You'd get really confused
Check to see whether your implementation is even supported by Google using the tools I linked you to. If it is, then just use self referencing canonical tags and do not deploy alternate tags (which would make no sense, since both versions of the site are on the same URL). When people build responsive sites (same source code on the same URL, but it's adaptive CSS which re-organises the contents of the page based upon viewport widths) - they don't use alternate tags, only canonicals
Since your situation is more similar to responsive design (from a crawling perspective) than it is to separate mobile site design, drop the alt
-
The problem with this is, where you say "corresponding mobile URL" - there isn't one as OP has stated that, two different source codes (pages) can be rendered on the same URL depending upon the user's screen size / user-agent (however they are detecting mobile, and serving different pages)
-
Hi JH
This is very straightforward.
Use the following annotations:
- On the desktop page, add a rel=”alternate” tag pointing to the corresponding mobile URL. This helps Googlebot discover the location of your site’s mobile pages.
- On the mobile page, add a link rel=”canonical” tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL.
It is that simple and doing this will not create duplicate content
More here: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
Regards Nigel
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 I put rel next and rel prev and canonical on tags pages
Hi I have a tag pages on a news website each tag page is divided to several pages, but Google does't crawled those pages because the links are in javaScript, I want to do the following things: Change the links to html href Add rel=pref rel=next Add a canonical in each page with the url of the main tag page Do you agree with my solution? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Canonical URL Multidomain Geolocation Based
Hey there Mozzers, I have a question on the implementation of the canonical tag. I have 3 TLDs that redirect depending the GeoLocation of the person entering the site. www.example.com www.example.co.uk www.example.com.au The content is the same to all of those. Should I choose 1 of them that all the canonicals should point or should all them point to themselves with the canonical tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AngelosS0 -
Safely change canonical URL many times
Hi, We are actually working on a new product information section for our network of websites (site A, B, C and D) where product landing pages allow to download information in pdf format and are active for downloads during a period of two months (active form for commercial reasons) with a unique URL (the case today). Here is a possible scenario for these product landing pages in the near future: Product is promoted in website A during 2 months (January to February) so canonical URL = A/page. Once expired, the product info. download form disappears. Customer decides to promote the same product in the same site A as well in site B from April to May so canonical URL will still be A/page. Canonical URL of B/page will point to A/page. Customer decides to relaunch his product promotion this time in site C from July to August so canonical URLs of pages A/page and B/page will now point to C/page as the latter will be the only product campaign active with a download form At the end of the year the customer does another campaign for the same product this time in website D so we will change the canonical URL of pages A/page, B/page and C/page to D/page as the latter will be the only product campaign active with a download form The obvious question here is: will this way of changing canonical URLs dynamically hurt the SEO of the section, pages, one particular website or the whole network ? Would it be better and safer to just keep the first canonical URL forever? A/page in this example Thanks so much for your input on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JulienLetellier0 -
Advice on Content Marketing in a Tough Niche
Hello, In our niche, nobody links to the content/information with rare exceptions. Do you guys have any good articles/ideas for cases like this? The content that is linked to is once removed in subject matter from the content of our site, like if we sold shoes and had to write on different types of clothing stores. Looking for advice on what to do and how to figure out what to write about. We've probably got a descent budget this time but we're not sure how to go about this. Any advice is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
301 canonical'd pages?
I have an ecommerce site with many different URLs with the same product. Let's say the product is a hat. It's in: a a) mysite.com/products/hat b) mysite.com/collections/head-ware/hat c) mysite.com/collections/stuff-to-wear-on-your-head/hat Right now, A is the canonical page for B and C. I want to clean up my site, so that every product only has ONE unique URL, which is linked to from all the collections. So B and C URL will be broken. Is it necessary that I 301 them if they were already canonical'd? Based on the number of products I have, I would have to 301 1000+ URLs. I'm just trying to figure out what I need to do to avoid getting penalized. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | birchlore0 -
Hit by Google updates; Some good advice needed
Hi, Here`s my domain http://www.kent-website-designer.co.uk/. Registered in 2007. We have took a big hit from the updates in the last 6 months and its really affecting revenue. I know when you look at the site you may well think WOW this is 2007 SEO and youre right it hasnt been updated in some time as of last year we ranked very highly and it gave us enough business to concentrate on. However up until last year many of my competitors were using same onpage and offpage strategies....and probably a few of you were too! So now the inquiries and income is drying up. However, I provided myself with an income from my efforts, rather than be unemployed, so I want to get it back on track. I visited the Google webmaster forums to query a couple of webmaster account queries and basically got beat up by the rude and arrogant google forum admins. Basically they said I was a spam site who shouldnt be in business. How very nice! 1. I have EMD - but domain age should mean something? 2. I lost a few links from https://www.getsafeonline.org/partners-and-supporters/ in the last year which hasnt helped when they reorganised their content. Same with other trusted sites we lost links. We are left with low quality links. 3. Some CMS sites have replicated our footer links on a large scale, which wasnt intentional but may look as link spam, plus they arent no followed as G prefers. 4. Google seems to have become intelligent? Apparently it can detect content which is negative in outdated seo advice. How, can it understand context and meaning so older seo advice isdetected as spam content? 5. No pages are de indexed just a rank drop to 30 - 60 positions. 6. Over optimised H1`s? 7. Is Pipe command in titles now negative? So its sink or swim time I guess. The siteand domain is honest but neglected and probably should re align the business with what we can offer. We got away with that SEO but clearly things have changed. However with no grey or black hat at least we arent overly worried by removing links. Also looking for an SEO company who we can outsource with a white label solution in order to offer SEO. I dont need beating up, short and to the point critiques please. Pros and Cons Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xtopher661 -
Is there a reason to put a canonical to yourself? Interesting case...
Hi, I was looking at BlueNile (biggest diamonds online dealer in the world) since I was wondering how they dealt with similar products and with sold products. Each diamond that is sold is unique. Once it is sold it is unavailable for sale. Also, all diamonds are VERY similar so they should also find a way to handle duplication in content. Look at the following 2 pages: http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02360835 http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02366155 The pages are practically identical and in the "view source" I noticed that they add a canonical tag to themselves... Any thoughts on that? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Canonical Tag - Question
Hey, I will give a thumbs up and best answer to whoever answers my question correctly. The Canonical Tag is supposed to solve Duplication which is fine. My questions are: Does the Canonical Tag make the PR / Link Juice flow differently? If I have john.long.com/home and john.long.com but put a Canonical Tag on john.long.com/home reading john.long.com then what does this do? Does it flow the Link Equity back to john.long.com? Can you use the Canonical Tag to change PR flow in any means? If I had john.long.com/washing-machines and john.long.com/kids-toys... If I put a Canonical Tag on john.long.com/kids-toys reading john.long.com/washing-machines then would the PR from /kids-toys flow to /washing-machines or would Google just ignore this? (The pages are completely different in this example and content is completely different). Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdiRste0