Canonical to the page itself?
-
Hello,
I'd like to know what happens when you use canonical to the same page itself, like:
Page "example.com"
rel canonical="example.com"
Does that impact in something? Bad or good?
See ya!
-
We're re-evaluating the canonical notice, as it's confusing to a lot of people. Our intent wasn't necessarily to say that the tag is wrong, but more of a "heads up" (in case there are potential problems). Unfortunately, there's no good way to automatically detect what page a canonical should point to, so we tend to have to use general warnings.
-
According to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8eQgx-njk4 Matt says there is no penalization of any kind with a canonical tag referencing to the page itself.
However, I have noticed that SEOMoz doesn't like it. It keeps reporting thousands of canonicals in the "Notices" report as if there was something I should do about it.
-
Keep in mind that a lot of my organic SEO client work is helping people deal with massive-scale duplicate content problems (including Panda issues), so I'm probably a bit more hyper-sensitive than your average person
-
For some people, a "landing page" could have URL variants, like tracking parameters for affiliates. So, it's hard to talk about them in a vacuum. If you're talking about a regular main-nav page like "About Us", you'd almost never need a canonical tag.
-
For e-commerce I think is very important, even more for the big ones, that have a lot of filters of princing or color that are in fact other URLs. There we need to input a canonical.
But for landing pages, N1 deep, that seems like a hotsite, when the company just sells one online service, I can't imagine what kind of benefits using "self canonical" in a page like this.
Sorry for making this longer, I should've chosen Discussion up there!
Answer when you can! =] -
I'd say it's a matter of risk. If you're on an e-commerce site, for sample, where the risk of a page having URL-based duplicates is high, a pre-emptive canonical can make sense. In a perfect world, I agree with Alan - it's better not to need them. I've just rarely seen that perfect world on large sites.
"Landing pages" is a loaded term, though, because landing pages can often have tracking parameters (such as affiliate IDs) and other URL modifications. Some landing pages are a perfect storm of dupe content. So, it's really situational.
-
Thanks for the attention Peter.
I understand your point about the Homepage.
But what about other pages? Landing pages with canonical to it self?
It seems to me meaningless, or worse, lowering trust, like Bing seems to do, in the link Alan wrote above.
-
I think it's good for some pages, especially the home-page, because you can naturally have so many variants ("www" vs. non-www, for example). It's a lot easier to pre-emptively canonicalize them than 301-redirect every URL variant that might pop up over time.
While Alan's concerns are technically correct, I've never seen evidence that either Google or Bing actually devalue a page for a self-referencing canonical. For Google, the risks of duplicates are much worse than the risk of an unnecessary canonical tag, IMO. For Bing, I don't really have good data either way. More and more people use canonical proactively, so I suspect Bing doesn't take action.
I don't generally use it site-wide, unless needed, but I almost always recommend a canonical on the home-page, at least for now. Technical SEO is always changing.
-
yes you are correct,
The only good thing about doing it is stopping scrapers, if they dont take them out, but i dont think this is much of a advanatge as I believ if you do get scraped it is likely that they will remove you canonical, if they dont, I believe that SE's will see that they have a site full of duplicate content and give the credit to you anyhow. I think that SE's get this correct most of the time.
And if you are using canonicals for a valid reason, you dont want Bing to ingnore them because you have misused them elsewhere. Even for 2%
-
Thanks Alan,
So, what seems is that "self page canonical" has no clear or even any good points for taking the risk of doing it?
I'm more concerned about Google, once I'm from Brazil, and Google rules 98% of searches...
-
When some one scrapes your site they take the canonical with them, pointing back to the original, so you still get credit. that is if they dont take it out.
But this is a miss use of a canonical, a canonical should not point back to the same page.
Bing for one has said that they will lose trust in your site if you do this, they will start to not trust all your canonicals, those that are there for a good reason.
http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/10/06/managing-redirects-301s-302s-and-canonicals.aspxGoogle have said that they can handle it.
But a canonical does not pass all the link juice, so a canonical to itself, does it leak link juice? google says that can handle it, but that does not mean there is not a leak in link juice.
I for one dont do it, bing has made it clear they dont like, and even though google have said they can handle it, it does not mean there is no down side.
-
Thanks Stephen!
Can your talk more about the scrape? It was not too clear for me.
Sorry =]
-
Nothing bad and turns good when people scrape your content (it gets scraped with the canonical to your page) or you make a mistake with your information architecture (as things tend to point to the correct place)
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
-
What to do about pages I have deleted?
I have been working through the dead links on my page and recreating the page with new content for those pages that it still makes sense to have on the site. But I have a few that were just changes of the title, spelling mistakes or other ways of saying the same thing In other words I created a page called "areas of the UK we cover" but decided to change it to "areas covered" However, I must have created links to this page and now it is a dead link with a page authority of 19 I think it would be spammy to have two pages, one called "areas covered" and the other called "areas of the UK we cover. It's not a disallow in Robots.txt because the page does not exist Please note I do not have access to the header to add code for a 301 redirect. I'm still using webs.com but not for new sites. I also have a page called singing telegrams london, that I changed from singagrams london. These are two words for the same thing but they are two very different keywords would it be ok to recreate this page and create content for singagrams london. Help is much appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | singingtelegramsuk0 -
Form Only Pages Considered No Content/Duplicate Pages
We have a lot of WordPress sites with pages that contain only a form. The header, sidebar and footer content is the same as what's one other pages throughout the site. Each form page has a unique page title, meta description, form title and questions but the form title, description and questions add up to probably less than 100 words. Are these form pages negatively affecting the rankings of our landing pages or being viewed as duplicate or no content pages?
On-Page Optimization | | projectassistant0 -
Too many on page links
Hello, I have a page that isn't ranking very well. http://nicontrols.com/uk/drives-motors/variable-speed-drives According to the MOZ research tools I have too many on page links. I believe most of these are a result of the advanced filtration options on the left hand side of the page. I don't want to remove the filters as they are extremely useful for customers but I am also worried about the number of links Anyone get any ideas about the number of links? Should I care?
On-Page Optimization | | DavidLenehan0 -
A question on cached pages
Hi all. I have been testing different ways of writing the text on the homepage of the website www document-management-solutions co.uk because we are ranking very low for the keyword Document Management Software. I've recently learnt about pages being 'cached' and wanted to just clarify something. The last time the page was cached was on 26th March. I have made changed to the homepage since then and wanted to see how it has affected our ranking. Will I not be able to know if it has had a positive/negative effect until the next time our page is cached? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | janc0 -
Why don't all my pages have On Page Optimization Reports
Apologies if this question has been asked a million times, but I can't find it. I have 35 pages, yet only 5 of them have generated On Page Optimization Reports. I know I can create them manually, but wondered if I've done something incorrectly? Iain.
On-Page Optimization | | iainmoran0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
Keywords per Page
Iv'e looked through the QA here and there are a lot of different conflicting opinions on what is a generally a good idea. For Example Florist Clearwater Clearwater Florist Florist in Clearwater Florist in Clearwater FL Clearwater FL Florist Clearwater Florida Florist Florist in Clearwater Florida Florist near Clearwater FL etc.... So for something like this example....should I have one page represent all of these keyword iterations or split them among different pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BenGMKT0 -
On-page SEO reviews
Hi everyone 🙂 I was hoping someone could point me in a direction on where I could get my website's on-page SEO a review with recommendations. Title tags, meta description, code, H1s, content and so on... I know you can find most of what I'm asking online, but I would like a professional with a new set of eyes to help out. Thanks in advance for your time in helping!
On-Page Optimization | | AutoGlassRescue0