Canonical Tag on All Pages
-
This is a new one for me. I have a client that has a canonical tag on almost every page of their site. Even on pages that don't need it.
For example on http://www.client.com/examplex
they had code:
Maybe I have missed something, but is there a reason for this? Does this hurt the ranking of the page?
-
It looks like it was a typo on my end. Thanks ... great catch.
-
I noticed you have:
For example on http://www.client.com/examplex
they had code:
The URL in the canonical code has a trailing slash at the end. Is that a mistype, or Is the site using canonicals as a way of addressing duplicate content by pointing the trailing slash version to the non trailing slash version?
If the CMS automatically creates two versions of each page with and without the slash, that might be one reason to have canonicals on every page.
-
There isn't a major negative effect when using canonicals even when they are not needed. Some CMS use sitewide canonicals to easier tackle duplicate URLs. So if a base URL is using parameters, the CMS might have been setup to follow back to the canonical URL.
A quick example would be: view-source:http://www.expedia.com/
-
Oh ok, I see what you mean. What it is actually saying is "this page you are looking at is the one true source". It basically makes a correlation with the search engines between the content on the page and what page that content should be on, in a lesser sense if it is found on another page.
-
Even when it references the page that it is on? That is where I am a little baffled. It is like saying this page you are looking at is the same as the page you are looking at... right? (page x is referencing page x)
Again, might be out of the loop here, so want to verify.
-
Why would you think a page would not need one? It is hard to tell from the example you gave what you meant, but I take the stance that every page needs one.
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
-
Google Search Console Not Indexing Pages
Hi there! I have a problem that I was hoping someone could help me with. On google search console, my website does not seem to be indexed well. In fact, even after rectifying problems that Moz's on-demand crawl has pointed out, it still does not become "valid". There are some of the excluded pages that Google has pointed out. I have rectified some of the issues but it doesn't seem to be helping. However, when I submitted the sitemap, it says that the URLs were discoverable, hence I am not sure why they can be discovered but are not deemed "valid". I would sincerely appreciate any suggestions or insights as to how can I go about to solve this issue. Thanks! Screenshot+%28341%29.png Screenshot+%28342%29.png Screenshot+%28343%29.png
Algorithm Updates | | Chowsey0 -
Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages), can it be used for non-Google news and Ecommerce Websites?
Mozzers, I've been doing a lot of research on Google's new Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) https://moz.com/blog/accelerated-mobile-pages-whiteboard-friday. From what I'm seeing, these AMP version websites are only for Google News-worthy websites such as New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and the BuzzFeeds of the world. But what about Ecommerce websites like Ebay or Amazon? Will AMP versions of "scotch tape" via OfficeDepot work in the SERP's on non-Google News cards?
Algorithm Updates | | Shawn1240 -
Why do we have so many pages scanned by bots (over 250,000) and our biggest competitors have about 70,000? Seems like something is very wrong.
We are trying to figure out why last year we had a huge (80%) and sudden (within two days) drop in our google searches. The only "outlier" in our site that we can find is a huge number of pages reported in MOZ as scanned by search engines. Is this a problem? How did we get so many pages reported? What can we do to bring the number of searched pages back to a "normal" level? BT
Algorithm Updates | | achituv0 -
Reasons for a sharp decline in pages crawled
Hello! I have a site I've been tracking using Moz since July. The site is mainly stagnant with some on page content updates. Starting the first week of December, Moz crawler diagnostics showed that the number of pages crawled decreased from 300 to 100 in a week. So did the number of errors through. So crawler issues went from 275 to 50 and total pages crawled went from 190 to 125 in a week and this number has stayed the same for the last 5 weeks. Are the drops a red flag? Or is it ok since errors decreased also? Has anyone else experienced this and found an issue? FYI: sitemap exists and is submitted via webmaster tools. GWT shows no crawler errors nor blocked URLs.
Algorithm Updates | | Symmetri0 -
How much link juice does a sites homepage pass to inner pages and influence inner page rankings?
Hi, I have a question regarding the power of internal links and how much link juice they pass, and how they influence search engine ranking positions. If we take the example of an ecommerce store that sells kites. Scenario 1 It can be assumed that it is easier for the kite ecommerce store to earn links to its homepage from writing great content on its blog, as any blogger that will link to the content will likely use the site name, and homepage as anchor text. So if we follow this through, then it can be assumed that there will eventually be a large number of high quality backlinks pointing to the sites homepage from various high authority blogs that love the content being posted on the sites blog. The question is how much link juice does this homepage pass to the category pages, and from the category pages then to the product pages, and what influence does this have on rankings? I ask because I have seen strong ecommerce sites with very strong DA or domain PR but with no backlinks to the product page/category page that are being ranked in the top 10 of search results often, for the respective category and product pages. It therefore leads me to assume that internal links must have a strong determiner on search rankings... Could it therefore also be assumed that a site with a PR of 5 and no links to a specific product page, would rank higher than a site with a PR of 1 but with 100 links pointing to the specific product page? Assuming they were both trying to rank for the same product keyword, and all other factors were equal. Ie. neither of them built spammy links or over optimised anchor text? Scenario 2 Does internal linking work both ways? Whereas in my above example I spoke about the homepage carrying link juice downward to the inner category and product pages. Can a powerful inner page carry link juice upward to category pages and then the homepage. For example, say the blogger who liked the kite stores blog content piece linked directly to the blog content piece from his site and the kite store blog content piece was hosted on www.xxxxxxx.com/blog/blogcontentpiece As authority links are being built to this blog content piece page from other bloggers linking to it, will it then pass link juice up to the main blog category page, and then the kite sites main homepage? And if there is a link with relevant anchor text as part of the blog content piece will this cause the link juice flowing upwards to be stronger? I know the above is quite winded, but I couldn't find anywhere that explains the power of internal linking on SERP's... Look forward to your replies on this....
Algorithm Updates | | sanj50500 -
On-page Optimization
Hi, I have two campaigns and neither have any statistics for on-page optimization. Am I doing something wrong or how do I make these stats appear? I would like to improve my website. Thank you in advanced for any pointers or shared experience you may give me!
Algorithm Updates | | Pixeltistic0 -
Is it OK to 301 redirect the index page to a search engine friendly url
Is it OK to 301 redirect the index page to a search engine friendly url.
Algorithm Updates | | WinningInch0 -
Using Brand Name in Page titles
Is it a good practice to append our brand name at the end of every page title? We have a very strong brand name but it is also long. Right now what we are doing is saying: Product Name | Long brand name here Product Category | Long brand name here Is this the right way to do it or should we just be going with ONLY the product and category names in our page titles? Right now we often exceed the 70 character recommendation limit.
Algorithm Updates | | mlentner1