Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is the correct Canonical tag on m.site?
-
We have 2 separate sites for desktop (www.example.com) and mobile (m.example.com)
As per the guideline, we have added Rel=alternate tag on www.example.com to point to mobile URL(m.example.com) and Rel=canonical tag on m.example.com to point to Desktop site(www.example.com).However, i didn't find any guideline on what canonical tag we should add ifFor Desktop sitewww.example.com/PageA - has a canonical tag to www.example.com/PageBOn this page, we have a Rel=alternate tag m.example.com/pageAWhat will be the canonical we should add for the mobile version of Page Am.example.com/PageA - Canonical tag point to www.example.com/PageA -or www.example.com/PageB?Kalpesh
-
Hi, I hope this helps,
Do NOT point desktop pages to m. pages via a
rel="canonical" tags use rel="alternate" for that & make surerel="canonical"tag on the m. URL pointing to the corresponding desktop URLAnnotations for desktop and mobile URLs
- 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
rel="canonical"tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL.
We support two methods to have this annotation: in the HTML of the pages themselves and in sitemaps. For example, suppose that the desktop URL is
https://example.com/page-1and the corresponding mobile URL ishttps://m.example.com/page-1. The annotations in this example would be as follows.Annotations in the HTML
On the desktop page (
https://www.example.com/page-1), add the following annotation:<code dir="ltr"><linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<br="">href="https://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only></code>On the mobile page (
https://m.example.com/page-1), the required annotation should be:<code dir="ltr"><linkrel="canonical"href="https: www.example.com="" page-1"=""></linkrel="canonical"href="https:></code>This
rel="canonical"tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.A page have a self-referencing canonical URL
In the example above, we link the non-canonical page to the canonical version. But should a page set a rel=canonical for itself? I strongly recommend having a canonical link element on every page and Google has confirmed that’s best. That’s because most Sites & CMS’s will allow URL parameters without changing the content.
So all of these URLs would show the same content:
-
https://www.example.com/page-1 -
https://www.example.com/page-1/?isnt=it-awesome -
https://www.example.com/page-1/?cmpgn=twitter -
https://www.example.com/page-1/?cmpgn=facebook
Using a mobile website version of their desktop version, they need to implement a canonical tag on their mobile website page with an URL of the desktop version.
For example,
Your main domain: iamexample.com
Your mobile version: m.iamexample.com
Then, have this tag in the section of your main domain -
And, have this tag in the section of your mobile version page -
Mobile-Specific URLs, Such as AMP Pages or a Mobile-Specific Subdomain
Creating content with mobile in mind is a marketing must -- just be sure to remember to set your canonical URLs when you have pages that are specific to mobile but have the same content as a page on the desktop version of your website. For AMP pages specifically, Google also provides detailed guidelines on how to correctly differentiate your Accelerated Mobile Page from your standard webpage.
SEE:
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
- https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/
- https://moz.com/blog/cross-domain-rel-canonical-seo-value-cross-posted-content
- https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
- https://moz.com/blog/rel-canonical
Hope this helps,
Tom
- On the desktop page, add a
-
You shouldn't have canonical tags on either pointing to the other IMO. A canonical tag, deployed on a web-page, says to Google "I am the non-canonical version of a page. Unless you have signals like links which contradict this tag strongly, don't index this non-canonical page at all. Only index the canonical URL which I am pointing you to"
So the page which you place the canonical tag on, becomes (itself) non canonical and therefore gives a medium-to-strong signal to Google that it should be de-indexed. As such, if you plaster your mobile site in canonical tags, you are essentially telling Google that the entire mobile site is non-canonical and thereby probably not a great candidate for indexation. Do you want your mobile site to rank? I assume you do
I don't know what guidance you have read. Google's guidance is often woefully out of date as their documentation update cycle for organic-search stuff is really poor. If it was something here on Moz, I personally disagree with it
I would just stick with the alternate tags. Anyway if you have canonicals going in two directions, you will create a soft redirect loop where both URLs specify themselves as non-canonical. That could make things way worse than they are now
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
-
Dynamic Canonical Tag for Search Results Filtering Page
Hi everyone, I run a website in the travel industry where most users land on a location page (e.g. domain.com/product/location, before performing a search by selecting dates and times. This then takes them to a pre filtered dynamic search results page with options for their selected location on a separate URL (e.g. /book/results). The /book/results page can only be accessed on our website by performing a search, and URL's with search parameters from this page have never been indexed in the past. We work with some large partners who use our booking engine who have recently started linking to these pre filtered search results pages. This is not being done on a large scale and at present we only have a couple of hundred of these search results pages indexed. I could easily add a noindex or self-referencing canonical tag to the /book/results page to remove them, however it’s been suggested that adding a dynamic canonical tag to our pre filtered results pages pointing to the location page (based on the location information in the query string) could be beneficial for the SEO of our location pages. This makes sense as the partner websites that link to our /book/results page are very high authority and any way that this could be passed to our location pages (which are our most important in terms of rankings) sounds good, however I have a couple of concerns. • Is using a dynamic canonical tag in this way considered spammy / manipulative? • Whilst all the content that appears on the pre filtered /book/results page is present on the static location page where the search initiates and which the canonical tag would point to, it is presented differently and there is a lot more content on the static location page that isn’t present on the /book/results page. Is this likely to see the canonical tag being ignored / link equity not being passed as hoped, and are there greater risks to this that I should be worried about? I can’t find many examples of other sites where this has been implemented but the closest would probably be booking.com. https://www.booking.com/searchresults.it.html?label=gen173nr-1FCAEoggI46AdIM1gEaFCIAQGYARS4ARfIAQzYAQHoAQH4AQuIAgGoAgO4ArajrpcGwAIB0gIkYmUxYjNlZWMtYWQzMi00NWJmLTk5NTItNzY1MzljZTVhOTk02AIG4AIB&sid=d4030ebf4f04bb7ddcb2b04d1bade521&dest_id=-2601889&dest_type=city& Canonical points to https://www.booking.com/city/gb/london.it.html In our scenario however there is a greater difference between the content on both pages (and booking.com have a load of search results pages indexed which is not what we’re looking for) Would be great to get any feedback on this before I rule it out. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | GAnalytics1 -
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
Do Canonical Tags Pass Link Juice?
I have an ecommerce website where some pages link to a product page with a different URL. EXAMPLE: 1: /category/product1.html (not indexed by Google) with canonical pointing to product1.html Other page link to the product like below. 2: product1.html (indexed by Google) Now the question is, does 1: pass any link juice to product1.html or not? Is it worth to change everything and link only to one URL? My site is running on Magento!
Technical SEO | | bill3690 -
Does Google read dynamic canonical tags?
Does Google recognize rel=canonical tag if loaded dynamically via javascript? Here's what we're using to load: <script> //Inject canonical link into page head if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname1") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/kapiolani", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname2") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/straub", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname3") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/pali-momi", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname4") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/wilcox", ""); } if (canonicalLink != window.location.href) { var link = document.createElement('link'); link.rel = 'canonical'; link.href = canonicalLink; document.head.appendChild(link); } script>
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google?
Hi, we re-branded and launched a new website in February 2016. In June we saw a steep drop in the number of URLs indexed, and there have continued to be smaller dips since. We started an account with Moz and found several thousand high priority crawl errors for duplicate pages and have since fixed those with canonical tags. However, we are still seeing the number of URLs indexed drop. Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this. A good portion of our URLs have canonical tags because they are just events with different dates, but otherwise the content of the page is the same.
Technical SEO | | zasite0 -
Can anyone tell me why some of the top referrers to my site are porn site?
We noticed today that 4 of the top referring sites are actually porn sites. Does anyone know what that is all about? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup1 -
Do canonical tags pass all of the link juice onto the URL they point to?
I have an ecommerce website where the category pages have various sorting and paging options which add a suffix to the URLs. My site is setup so the root category URL, domain.com/category-name, has a canonical tag pointing to domain.com/category-name/page1/price however all links, both interner & external, point to the former (i.e. domain.com/category-name). I would like to know whether all of the link juice is being passed onto the canonical tag URL? Otherwise should I change the canonical tag to point the other way? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tjhossy0 -
Should there be a canonical tag on my 404 error page?
In my crawl diagnostics, I notice some 4xx client errors. They are appearing for pages that no longer exist, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Shouldn't they just be dealt as 404's? Anyway, on closer inspection I noticed that my 404 error page contains a canonical tag which points to the missing page. Could this be the issue? Is it a good idea to remove the canonical tag from this error page? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Leighm0