Canonical URL's - Do they need to be on the "pointed at" page?

[DPSSeomonkey]

My understanding is that they are only required on the "pointing pages" however I've recently heard otherwise.

[AlanMosley]

It is Bing that says it is incorrect, not me.

"To be clear, using the rel=canonical doesn’t really hurt you.  But, it doesn’t
help us trust the signal when you use it incorrectly across thousands of pages,
yet correctly across a few others on your website."

You are correct in that it does say, "no need for that" and says the use is incorect. So why do it?

[RyanKent]

Actually, there is more to the article. It says there is "no need for that" referring to adding a canonical tag to a page referring to itself. It is a stretch to say such usage is "incorrect".

I did what I could to re-read the article and try as objectively as possible to see your viewpoint but was unsuccessful. I asked two other people to read the article and they also were not able to come to the same conclusion. I think you are very very pro-Microsoft/Bing, which is not a bad thing except it seems you may add extra significance to certain statements made by MS/Bing.

Alan, we can go back and forth but there is no further point. Your position, as well as mine, are well set. Neither of us will successfully convince the other to change opinions on this topic without the introduction of new information. The original person who asked the question has been satisfied and made his or her decision. I'm going to let this topic go.

Best Regards

[AlanMosley]

atcualy Rayn, the snpitt you cut from the article

To be clear, using the rel=canonical doesn’t really hurt you.

in full reads

To be clear, using the rel=canonical doesn’t really hurt you.  But, it doesn’t
help us trust the signal when you use it incorrectly across thousands of pages,
yet correctly across a few others on your website.

I would not advice using it in all pages

[AlanMosley]

No it is Bings claim

If you have posted the quote in full from bing it reads

To be clear, using the rel=canonical doesn’t really hurt you.  But, it doesn’t
help us trust the signal when you use it incorrectly across thousands of pages,
yet correctly across a few others on your website.

So to say it is a indutrsty standard, is simple not correct.

I think the argument is between you and bing.

[RyanKent]

So it is your opinion that Google, SEOmoz, Distilled and countless others misuse the tag? We will just have to disagree on this point.

The canonical tag has been out for close to three years. I like Duane Forrester. I link Bing. But Bing is not the dominant player in search. They don't make the rules. The fact last month Bing announced their opinion that it is inappropriate to use the canonical tag on the same page is interesting. It's interesting.

If Duane or Bing explicitly shared they would penalize sites for using the tag on the same page as the referred to canonical link then it would rise above "interesting" to something which we might consider taking action upon. Instead, Bing took the opposite approach and clearly stated "To be clear, using the rel=canonical doesn’t really hurt you".

[AlanMosley]

The industry best standard would be to use it properly, that is use it to point to a canonical page. not to put it in the canonical page. that what it is for. That is what one of the main industry players advises. the other said they can cope with it in the pointed at page, but did not advise it.

Putting it in each page is a misuses, as i underrstadn it it is done to stop screen scaping, that is not the correct use of the tag.

[DPSSeomonkey]

Thanks everyone for the great answers.

My website contains over 216,000 pages, most of them being search result pages with canonical urls.

I can't justify adding extra code that points the link juice to the same page it's on so I'll leave the canonical url off the target page.

I'll be monitoring the behaviour and will report back if I notice anything.

[RyanKent]

There are many sites which generate 20+ canonical versions of a page for every primary version. You have the print version along with both ascending and descending for 10 fields such as price, color, size and many other fields. In these cases a 301 should not be used and a canonical tag should be used.

Again, I think you are misinterpreting the article's intent Alan. The exact quote is "it doesn’t help us trust the signal when you use it incorrectly across thousands of pages, yet correctly across a few others on your website." In the above situation, it would not be a misuse. It is exactly what the tag was designed for.

If Bing wants to disregard the canonical tag on pages where it points to the same page, they are clearly wise enough to do so with a single line of code. If they penalize sites for an industry best practice when they are clearly not the dominant player in the field, they wont last. Bing seems to be a good group of people who are making all the right moves to be more competitive with Google. I trust them to intelligently handle this situation in a similar manner to Google.

[RyanKent]

The best we can do in this Q&A is offer our knowledge and feedback and leave it up to others to make their decision. For my clients I will follow the current industry best practice.

I have reviewed the information you shared by Bing and I have to believe even Bing does not penalize sites on any level for use of the canonical tag in the manner described in this thread. Some quotes from the Bing article you mentioned:

"To be clear, using the rel=canonical doesn’t really hurt you. "

When speaking about using rel=canonical to list the same web page the tag appears on the article says "No need for that." but never suggests there is any penalty for doing such. I would further back down to the above quote where they said it "doesn't hurt you" and common sense to say there is no penalty.

Alan, I appreciate your sharing the Bing point of view. It makes us think critically and differently about various scenarios. I asked two others to read the same article you mentioned and no one else interpreted the same way you did. After considering all the information available on the topic I still feel it is a best practice to use the canonical tag on every page of a site.

[AlanMosley]

I think the canonical is a last resort, you should fix the problems in other ways. Variation of a url should be fixed with a 301 if possible

bing will ignore you canonicals will lose trust in your site if the are not used correctly, eg: on every page,

http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/10/06/managing-redirects-301s-302s-and-canonicals.aspx

[de4e]

Agree,

There are many possible  variations of same URLS, not under site owner control - different ?parametrs etc. So better add cannonical to each page.

[AlanMosley]

Well i would want to optimize it for 100% if posible, adding a canonical to the pointed at page does not optimize if for Bing or Google.

Bing may penalize you for having it in without having that intent, it may be a side effect of somthing else.

If i made a screen scapper, i would remove canonical tags annd absolute links.

The point ios a canoncal cannot pass all link juice or you would get infinte loops, rthere must be some decay, and if as Duane says, it assigns value to itsself, then it would not pass alll that value.

[RyanKent]

I read that article from Bing and knowing it exists I would not change my response nor my practice. The logic is:

• The quote says "there is no need" for it, but does not indicate it is harmful

• It would frankly be very dumb for Bing to penalize a site for a practice which is not visible to users, exists solely for search engines and otherwise does no harm. It would be easiest and smartest for them to simply disregard the tag if they felt it was not useful.

• Ultimately site owners need to decide how to best optimize their site. Do you want to optimize for Google which controls 70% of the market? Or Bing+Yahoo which is maybe 30%?

Adding a canonical tag not only provides a layer of protection against scrapers, it helps against various CMS and human errors where pages are copied accidentally or intentionally.

[AlanMosley]

Not recommened by bing

http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/10/06/managing-redirects-301s-302s-and-canonicals.aspx

The only reson i can see it being useful, to maybe save you if you are screen scraped, but I think anyone that screen scapes woul also look out for canonical tags.

SEOMoz does it, they recommend it in web apps, for the reason i gave , this is why I started doing it. But sicne them bing has recommened not to do it.

i have a suspision that it may even be a link juice leak, as Duane forrested states

"Pointing a rel=canonical at the page it is installed in essentially tells us
_“this page is a copy of itself.  Please pass any value from itself to itself.” _
No need for that."

Could that mean it leaks link juice on that hop? Or does it double up on value?

[RyanKent]

I would suggest the most commonly accepted industry best practice is to place a canonical tag on every page.

Google does it. Check http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

SEOmoz does it. Check this Q&A thread.

Distilled does it. Check their home page: http://www.distilled.net/

I would not say it is "necessary" but it can be a helpful.

[AlanMosley]

You are correct, they do not need to be on the pointed at page. In fact Bing states they should not be as they can confuse the Bot.

A canonical is like 301 that does not physicly move the user, but passes and link juice to the pouinted at page.

You would not have a 301 on the destination page 301ing to itself.