Canonical tags and internal Google search
-
Quick question: I want some pages that will have canonical tags, to show up in internal results for a Google site search that's built into the site. I'm not finished with the site, but is it correct to assume that pages with canonical will NOT show up in internal site search results, when powered by Google?
-
Of note, you can also customize your built-in internal Google site search: http://www.google.com/sitesearch/
"Customize search box and results using XML"
-
The opposite. Pages designated as canonical are more likely to show up in results. Here is the Google answer regarding Rel Canonical: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
Basically canonical tags say to Google "If you find multiple copies of this page, use this version." Note that duplicate content can refer to the page both on and not on the www subdomain, for example:
http://mydomain.com/mypage.html
http://www.mydomain.com/mypage.html
Can be confused by some crawler bots, so using rel canonical everywhere is generally considered a best practice to avoid these situations.
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
-
Duplicate content homepage - Google canonical 'N/A'?
Hi, I redesigned a clients website and launched it two weeks ago. Since then, I have 301 redirected all old URL's in Google's search results to their counterparts on the new site. However, none of the new pages are appearing in the search results and even the homepage has disappeared. Only old site links are appearing (even though the old website has been taken down ) and in GSC, it's stating that: Page is not indexed: Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user However, when I try to understand how to fix the issue and see which URL it is claiming to be a duplicate of, it says: Google-selected canonical: N/A It says that the last crawl was only yesterday - how can I possibly fix it without knowing which page it says it's a duplicate of? Is this something that just takes time, or is it permanent? I would understand if it was just Google taking time to crawl the pages and index but it seems to be adamant it's not going to show any of them at all. 55.png
Technical SEO | | goliath910 -
Canonical error from Google
Moz couldn't explain this properly and I don't understand how to fix it. Google emailed this morning saying "Alternate page with proper canonical tag." Moz also kinda complains about the main URL and the main URL/index.html being duplicate. Of course they are. The main URL doesn't work without the index.html page. What am I missing? How can I fix this to eliminate this duplicate problem which to me isn't a problem?
Technical SEO | | RVForce0 -
International SEO - Hreflang tags and URL Structure
Hello, I wonder if any SEO internationalisation experts can help. We are a UK centric business with a .com domain which all our traffic currently goes to. We have been growing in the US and are therefore looking to internationalise our website by building out some US pages using the subfolder .com/us. Since the keywords we wish to target in the US are different to the keywords we are targeting elsewhere, when implementing hreflang tags is it possible to use a different URL for the US page? So let’s say we are targeting ‘estate car’ generally but want to target ’station wagon’ as the keyword for the equivalent US page, can the URLs be different? Example: General page: www.example.com/estate-car US: www.example.com/us/station-wagon Hreflang tags: Would that be the correct implementation? Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Shopify Canonicals for Tagged Filters
I've been researching this topic endlessly and thought I had arrived at a solution but Screaming Frog indicates my solution was not successful. Problem: I used tags to filter my collections pages. The result, I discovered, was the creation of dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds, of additional collection URLs for each possible permutation of tag filters. I would like to make the collection page URL, with no tag filters, the canonical. Proposed Solution: I found the following code described somewhere as the solution: {% if template contains 'collection' and current_tags %} {% else %} {% endif %} However, I crawled my site with Screaming Frog and found that the canonical link element is still listed as the URL with the tags included. The crawler does recognizes the "noindex" instruction. Any ideas on what the best move is here?
Technical SEO | | vgusvg0 -
Adding /es version to google search console
I have a Wordpress site and we are using WPML for making it bilingual. The domain is: https://www.designerfreelance.net and for Spanish https://www.designerfreelance.net/es Do I have to add to Google search console the /es version? And the no www: https://www.designerfreelance.net https://www.designerfreelance.net/es https://designerfreelance.net https://designerfreelance.net/es and do I have to add the non ssl version? http://www.designerfreelance.net http://www.designerfreelance.net/es http://designerfreelance.net http://designerfreelance.net/es Thanks
Technical SEO | | Trazo0 -
Does Canonical Tag Syntax Matter?
Does anyone know definitively if the format of the canonical tag matters? Silly question I know. vs
Technical SEO | | Healio0 -
Google Links
I am assuming that the list presented by Google Webmaster tools (TRAFFIC | Links To Your Site) is the one that will actually be used by Google for indexing ? There seem to be quite a few links that there that should not be there. ie Assumed NOFOLLOW links. Am I working under an incorrect assumption that all links in webmaster tools are actually followed ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
Does Google follow links in "id" tag?
Hello, For functionality purposes, I need to wrap separate blocks of content with a tag. The main question is whether Google will follow this URL, even though it is not a hyperlink on the page, just a URL used for functionality purposes. We will have 10-20 of these types of span tags with a different URL for each one, and we just want to be sure that Google will not be following these URLs that are not links. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0