Is this causing me to drop in rank?
-
Today I noticed I was dropping (pretty big jump) for some keywords, so I checked out the source of a page, and noticed that my source code has two canonical urls. One to the home page, and one to the /page-title.
I just changed themes recently, and the dropped happened after I changed themes.
Is this what's causing me to drop in rank for certain terms? You can view the source here:
-
That was great content sir ! i added the comments there - adding the same question here also !
This article is very huge and will print it for better understanding !
My problem with the blog is the Duplicate content is marked as for Search Terms or Tags ! like i have written 10 post about design art, i added tags as "design art" in the tag form. using WordPress.org self hosted website !
-
I'm afraid there's no one, easy answer. I have a comprehensive post about dupe content here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
-
Peter, I just discovered I have tons of duplicate content & titles. How can I fix them? It is hurting.
-
Yeah, looks like I was of no use at all I'm glad it's working.
-
I'm seeing the bad canonical tag gone now. Are you seeing the same thing? Maybe just had a short-term caching issue.
-
Nope, no content delivery network. This is crazy. No idea what's happening.
-
Nope, no content delivery network. This is crazy. No idea what's happening.
-
We are definitely not seeing the same thing. Are you perchance using a content delivery network? It might just take some time to update if so.
I suggest we both keep an eye on it and make sure that it's fixed for both of us going forward
-
@Carson,
This is so odd. When I look at the page, I see this. Am I seeing something different than what you are seeing?
-
I see the same as you for that post, but I still see the canoncial on posts like this:
This is why I'm thinking you might have fixed it, and we're just seeing an old static version of the page. Re-caching the pages and/or updating posts might fix it up.
-
What's strange is when I view the source on that page, I don't see it:
-
Yes, I do. I'm been clearing the cache.
-
If you guys are both seeing it, I'm really confused. When I look at my source code, I see this:
-
I cleared my cache and I still see it on posts. I suppose it's worth asking if you have a caching/site speed plugin?
-
Just tried a different browser. Weird thing is that I'm seeing it on some pages, but not on others. For example. it's here still:
-
Nope...
-
Are there any admin settings in your theme itself? You may something built in that's re-adding the tag at a higher level in the code. Could be an admin flag needs to be reset.
-
I'm still seeing it as well. When you re-visit header.php now, is the line you deleted still gone?
-
Really? Do you mind clearing your cache and trying again? When I look I'm seeing just the one (correct) canonical.
-
Really? Do you mind clearing your cache and trying again? When I look I'm seeing just the one (correct) canonical.
-
Oh - yeah - that definitely doesn't look good. Probably a holdover from the template. You could just comment it out, but dumping it completely is fine, I suspect.
Unfortunately, I'm still seeing the canonical in the pages I'm checking (?)
-
Thanks Carson,
It looks like I may have figured it out. I checked out the header.php file and noticed this: . So I just deleted it, and it seems to be working fine.
-
Hi there,
Make sure to check any plugins first. Some themes and plugins offer the option to add any code you like to the head - it sounds like there might be a static canonical tag in a field like this. That would be my first thought - let me know if I can be of assistance in fixing this up.
Thanks,
Carson
-
No problem. Thanks!
-
Unfortunately, I'm not a WordPress expert by any means. I'll ping the team.
-
yelp. When I first found the problem, I figured out the theme and the plug in were both adding a canonical url, so I took out the function in the theme to add the canonical url. Everything was working when you looked at the post the other day and noticed there was only 1 canonical url. But today I was looking at some code, and noticed it was back to 2 on each one.
What do you suggest looking at / check out?
-
I'm seeing the 2 canonical tags, but unfortunately, there's almost no way to tell from the outside why the top one is being added. It looks like your plug-in is working correctly. This is a WordPress-based site, correct?
-
@Peter,
I'm not sure what happened, but for some reason the canonical is missing up again. All of the pages are using my home page as the canonical url again. No idea what is happening. Can you tell what's going on?
-
@Peter,
I'm not sure what happened, but for some reason the canonical is missing up again. All of the pages are using my home page as the canonical url again. No idea what is happening. Can you tell what's going on?
-
Same here. Thanks.
Hope you are doing well.
-
You've got the self-referencing canonical tags in place, which is about the best fix - unfortunately, there's no way to "undo" a bad canonical other than put a good canonical in its place. Hopefully, Google only picked up a few and, given the popularity of your site, they'll re-index pretty quickly.
-
Yes, I caught it. And it did pick up the canonical to the home page...I lost rank on a ton of key words. I'm hoping it gets fixed in the next index.
-
Did you fix it? I'm only seeing one canonical now. That would definitely be bad - if Google picked up the canonical to the home-page, you could collapse a ton of pages into one and effectively knock them out of the index (and, by extension, any ability to rank).
-
Thanks for the reply, but in this case I don't think that would apply.
What's happening is the them is putting 2 canonical urls into each post. The url of the current page, and the home page. So google is getting confused. Trying to fix it now.
-
Usually when you change themes you can have a temporary drop down, this is normal.
Please, read this Q&A there is a very good answer from EGOL: http://www.seomoz.org/q/seo-template-for-new-website
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
-
Ranking of non-homepage leads to decrease in website ranking?
Hi all, Google picks up a non-homepage to rank for primary keyword where homepage is actually optimised to rank for same keyword. This means Google is ignoring the actual page and ranking other page. Does this scenario means that we are ranking lower as the homepage is not considered here? We may rank much better if homepage is preferred by Google? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Lost Rankings Late April Even Though We Have A Mobile Site
I have noticed a significant drop in rankings since late April. It is about a 30% drop in organic from Google. This is despite the fact that we launched a mobile site before the update. What gives? Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
Web Design | | inhouseseo0 -
New Mobile Site Traffic Drop
With all the talk about how much mobile is important and how it is going to return its own search results, we finally decided to make a mobile site for one of our smaller websites to test the water. We put it up about two weeks ago and did Vary HTTP header method to serve the site. Before the change, on the average week we would get 270-300 mobile visitors from organic search results and we converted 0.78% to sales. Since the change, we are now getting about 70 mobile organic visitors per week but converting 2.47% So what can I say but WOW. We are converting way way better but our organic mobile search traffic has dropped off a ton. Luckily our desktop and tablet traffic(we serve the desktop version of the site to tablets) has stayed the same and has not dipped. Do any of you guys have experience or gone through launching a mobile site before? Did you see the immediate drop in organic mobile traffic and did you recover your traffic back to previous levels? If so, do you know how long it takes to recover? I am thinking it is a big change and will take time for Google to adjust but I am not sure since the mobile version has so much less text now on the home page and on category or product list pages or whatever you guys want to call them.
Web Design | | KurtL0 -
Website design chnage and massive traffic drop?
I changed my Drupal theme to "Bootstrap 3" and now my traffic is down 50% gradually in past 5 days, can this be theme related? Answers to checks below : 1). There were no redirects involved, I just flipped a switch and changed theme for my Drupal blog. 2). No issues reported by Google WMT except the fact that impressions fell, see stat images for comparison at - http://imgur.com/a/5PssH#0. 3). site:mysiteurl.com shows healthy "About 201,000 results". 4). Checked slow loading times and browser issue, nothing there. 5). It's not a seasonal drop. Pls. suggest what else should I focus upon to find the reason. @Prateek_Chandra where can I share my analytic report with you privately. I can also enable guest access to my account for you to have a look.
Web Design | | techdna11 -
How to make sure category pages rank higher than product pages?
Hi, This question is E-Commerce related. We have product categories dividing products by color. Let's say we have the category 'blue toy cars' and a product called 'blue toy car racer', both of these could rank for the keyword 'blue toy car'. How do we make sure the category 'blue toy cars' ranks above the product 'blue toy car racer'? Or is the category page automatically ranked higher because of the higher page authority of that page? Alex
Web Design | | WebmasterAlex0 -
Usual time to index and rank a new site
Hi Just wondering if anyone knew how long it usually takes for a brand new site to get indexed and ranked? I launched a new site about 5 weeks ago. So far I have had 96,000 pages indexed but the majority haven't ranked particularly well or appeared. The ones that have ranked aren't ranking high even though they have better content than competitors sites... And my old domain. Do I just need to hang tight and wait till my domain authority improves? Is there anything I can do to speed up this process? cheers
Web Design | | DavidLenehan0 -
Changing from Squarespace to Wordpress - Will I Lose My Rankings?
I have a friend who has a squarespace site that is giving him lots of trouble. For one, even though it is supposed to redirect to GreenSpaceConstruct.com...Bing and Yahoo don't seem to recognize this domain. Instead, they show greenlightconstruct.squarespace.com in the serp's. Oddly, Google shows the site as GreenSpaceConstruct.com. The site is ranking well for some terms. I'm afraid that converting to wordpress will hurt his rankings in the short term. If bing and yahoo are crawling this squarespace domain, and he moves it...is there a way not to just completely lose the rankings? Thanks for any thoughts. Much appreciated! Josh
Web Design | | JoshTurner0 -
Advice on migrating from .com to .co.uk without dropping in rank?
I have a retail business in the UK whose website has *.com address and it has taken 3 years to reach a page rank of 3. We are building an updated site which will have a completely new url structure and optimized for SEO. We are considering launching the new site at a *.co.uk as we understand this will have advantages in local search and ranking as we are primarily targeting UK traffic. Does anyone have comments on **.com vs .co.uk and/or have any advice on how to handle the migration while minimizing any drop in traffic and ranking?
Web Design | | brian.james0