Canonical URL's - Do they need to be on the "pointed at" page?
-
My understanding is that they are only required on the "pointing pages" however I've recently heard otherwise.
-
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?
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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".
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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,
-
Agree,
There are many possible variations of same URLS, not under site owner control - different ?parametrs etc. So better add cannonical to each page.
-
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.
-
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.
-
-
Not recommened by bing
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?
-
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.
-
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.
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
-
Rel Canonical for HTTP and HTTPS pages
My website has a login that has HTTPS pages. If the visitors doesn't log in they are given an HTTP page that is similar, but slightly different. Should I sure a Rel Canonical for these similar pages and how should that be set up? HTTP to HTTPS version or the other way around? Thank you, Joey
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoeyGedgaud1 -
Canonical Issue with urls
I saw some urls of my site showing duplicate page content, duplicate page title issues on crawl reports. So I have set canonical url for every urls , that has dupicate content / page title. But still SeoMoz crawl test is showing issue. I am giving here one url with issue. The below given urls shown duplicate content and duplicate page title with some other urls all are given below. Checked URL http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7635 dup page content http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622&category_id=270&colors=Black_Tones&click=colors&ci=1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trixmediainc
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 dup page Title http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636&category_id=270&sizes=12x15,12x18&click=sizes
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622&category_id=270&colors=Black_Tones&click=colors&ci=1
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 But I have set canonical url for all these urls already , that is :- http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 This should actually solve the problem right ? Search engine should identify the canonical url as original url and only should consider that. Thanks0 -
When is it recommended to use a self referencing rel "canonical"?
In what type of a situation is it the best type of practice to use a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? Are there particular practices to be cautious of when using a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? I see this practice used mainly with larger websites but I can't find any information that really explains when is a good time to make use of this practice for SEO purposes. Appreciate all feedback. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_Promenade0 -
My landing page changed in google's serp. I used to have a product page now I have a pdf?
I have been optimizing this page for a few weeks now and and have seen our page for up from 23rd to 11th on the serp's. I come to work today and not only have I dropped to 15 but I've also had my relevant product page replaced by this page . Not to mention the second page is a pdf! I am not sure what happened here but any advice on how I could fix this would be great. My site is www.mynaturalmarket.com and the keyword I'm working on is Zyflamend.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KenyonManu3-SEOSEM0 -
Is my landing page "over-optimized"? Please help
Hello out there My website www.painterdublin.com and www.tilers-dublin.com were heavily hit by google panda update on 27.9.2012 and EMD update few days after. I lost about 70% of the traffic mainly from combination of the keywords from my domain name (painter dublin and tilers dublin) and never managed to recover from it. I am wondering if I should also concentrate on rewriting the content of both home landing pages in the terms of "KEYWORD DENSITY". Do you think my content is "OVER OPTIMIZED" for my main keywords? (painter dublin, tilers-dublin). What is the correct use? Is there any tool to guide me? I am aware I am using those terms quite often. I don't want to start deleting those terms before I know the right way to do it. Is there anybody willing to have a look at my sites and give me advice please? kind regards Jaro
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jarik0 -
How long does it take before URL's are removed from Google?
Hello, I recently changed our websites url structures removing the .html at the end. I had about 55 301's setup from the old url to the new. Within a day all the new URL's were listed in Google, but the old .html ones still have not been removed a week later. Is there something I am missing? Or will it just take time for them to get de-indexed? As well, so far the Page Authority hasn't transfered from the old pages to the new, is this typical? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeanConroy0 -
How to check a website's architecture?
Hello everyone, I am an SEO analyst - a good one - but I am weak in technical aspects. I do not know any programming and only a little HTML. I know this is a major weakness for an SEO so my first request to you all is to guide me how to learn HTML and some basic PHP programming. Secondly... about the topic of this particular question - I know that a website should have a flat architecture... but I do not know how to find out if a website's architecture is flat or not, good or bad. Please help me out on this... I would be obliged. Eagerly awaiting your responses, BEst Regards, Talha
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
Best solution to get mass URl's out the SE's index
Hi, I've got an issue where our web developers have made a mistake on our website by messing up some URL's . Because our site works dynamically IE the URL's generated on a page are relevant to the current URL it ment the problem URL linked out to more problem URL's - effectively replicating an entire website directory under problem URL's - this has caused tens of thousands of URL's in SE's indexes which shouldn't be there. So say for example the problem URL's are like www.mysite.com/incorrect-directory/folder1/page1/ It seems I can correct this by doing the following: 1/. Use Robots.txt to disallow access to /incorrect-directory/* 2/. 301 the urls like this:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
www.mysite.com/incorrect-directory/folder1/page1/
301 to:
www.mysite.com/correct-directory/folder1/page1/ 3/. 301 URL's to the root correct directory like this:
www.mysite.com/incorrect-directory/folder1/page1/
www.mysite.com/incorrect-directory/folder1/page2/
www.mysite.com/incorrect-directory/folder2/ 301 to:
www.mysite.com/correct-directory/ Which method do you think is the best solution? - I doubt there is any link juice benifit from 301'ing URL's as there shouldn't be any external links pointing to the wrong URL's.0