Rel canonical and duplicate subdomains
-
Hi,
I'm working with a site that has multiple sub domains of entirely duplicate content. So, the production level site that visitors see is (for made-up illustrative example):
Then, there are sub domains which are used by different developers to work on their own changes to the production site, before those changes are pushed to production:
Google ends up indexing these duplicate sub domains, which is of course not good.
If we add a canonical tag to the head section of the production page (and therefor all of the duplicate sub domains) will that cause some kind of problem... having a canonical tag on a page pointing to itself? Is it okay to have a canonical tag on a page pointing to that same page?
To complete the example...
In this example, where our production page is 123abc456.edu, our canonical tag on all pages (this page and therefor the duplicate subdomains) would be:
Is that going to be okay and fix this without causing some new problem of a canonical tag pointing to the page it's on?
Thanks!
-
Hi Bob,
That excellent question I'll have to look in to and confirm. More later. Thanks!
-
Is the subdomain data stored on the server as directories?
So for example, is the Moe.123abc456.edu data stored in a folder like 123abc456.edu/Moe
If so, you can simply have one robots.txt on your root domain, blocking those directories
Disallow: /Moe/
-
Well, Bob, it looks like you're right! I guess it will for sure see all the pages in
as the ones to remove and not
Also, how does that robots text not get pushed to production as the developer working on that branch completes his work and pushes it to production.
I must confess, it still feels a little like bomb disposal.
-
This should be exactly what you need: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663427
-
Hi Bob,
Thanks for the suggestion/question. I'm thinking about that, but wouldn't putting some robots do not crawl text on pages already indexed be a little like closing the barn door after the horses left? Do you think it would un-index the already crawled sub-domain? Thanks!
-
Assuming that you do not need the development environments indexed in Google, why not simply block all crawlers on those subdomains?
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
-
Can a duplicate page referencing the original page on another domain in another country using the 'canonical link' still get indexed locally?
Hi I wonder if anyone could help me on a canonical link query/indexing issue. I have given an overview, intended solution and question below. Any advice on this query will be much appreciated. Overview: I have a client who has a .com domain that includes blog content intended for the US market using the correct lang tags. The client also has a .co.uk site without a blog but looking at creating one. As the target keywords and content are relevant across both UK and US markets and not to duplicate work the client has asked would it be worthwhile centralising the blog or provide any other efficient blog site structure recommendations. Suggested solution: As the domain authority (DA) on the .com/.co.uk sites are in the 60+ it would risky moving domains/subdomain at this stage and would be a waste not to utilise the DAs that have built up on both sites. I have suggested they keep both sites and share the same content between them using a content curated WP plugin and using the 'canonical link' to reference the original source (US or UK) - so not to get duplicate content issues. My question: Let's say I'm a potential customer in the UK and i'm searching using a keyword phrase that the content that answers my query is on both the UK and US site although the US content is the original source.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonRayner
Will the US or UK version blog appear in UK SERPs? My gut is the UK blog will as Google will try and serve me the most appropriate version of the content and as I'm in the UK it will be this version, even though I have identified the US source using the canonical link?2 -
Subdomained White-Label Sites
Wanted to pass along a specific use-case that I'm thinking through in the technical setup for a client. Site: http://www.abc.com is an ecommerce company that offers the ability to white-label a site so an affiliate can join and get access to the site, and ultimately get a cut of whatever is sold through that affiliate. So I join the site and get access to scott.xyz.com and can handle my business through that. From a technical standpoint, this is the proposed technical setup of the site. Canonical URLS will be set to www.xyz.com Pages on scott.xyz.com will be set to noindex, while the main www.xyz.com will be set to be indexed Webmaster Tools for scott.xyz.com will be set to have preferred domain of www.xyz.com scott.xyz.com will have separate robots.txt instructing to block crawl Questions Am I missing any steps in properly setting up the technical background of the subdomain sites? The use of subdomains isn't something that I am able to move away from. Will any links in to scott.xyz.com pass juice and authority to www.xyz.com, or does the noindex/nocrawl block that from happening? Is there anything else that I am missing? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemarieReed
Scott0 -
Canonical or No-index
Just a quick question really. Say I have a Promotions page where I list all current promotions for a product, and update it regularly to reflect the latest offer codes etc. On top of that I have Offer announcement posts for specific promotions for that product, highlighting very briefly the promotion, but also linking back to the main product promotion page which has a the promotion duplicated. So main page is 1000+ words with half a dozen promotions, the small post might be 200 words, and quickly become irrelevant as it is a limited time news article. Now, I don't want the promotion page indexed (unless it has a larger news story attached to the promotion, but for this purpose presume it is doesn't). Initially the core essence of the post will be duplicated in the main Promotion page, but later as the offer expires it wouldn't be. Therefore would you Rel Canonical or just simply No-index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheWebMastercom0 -
E-commerce duplicate URLS
Hi I just realized that my e-commerce products do not have any difference except the SKUS, PRICE and THE PRODUCT name. Apart from each page has the same sidebar and a piece of content ( same ) under each product pages. And this is the reason why i am getting too many duplicate urls warning through Moz analytics. I do not have any other contents to add for each product because of the nature of the product. Only the price, product name and the SKUs will be different and rest will all be same for each products. How can i fix this ? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MindlessWizard0 -
301 and Canonical - is using both counterproductive
A site lost a great deal of traffic in July, which appears to be from an algorithmic penalty, and hasn't recovered yet. It appears several updates were made to their system just before the drop in organic results. One of the issues noticed was that both uppercase and lowercase urls existed. Example urls are: www.domain.com/product123
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK717
www.domain.com/Product123 To clean this up, a 301 redirect was implemented a few months ago. Another issue found was that many product related urls had a parameter added to the url for a tracking purpose. To clean this up, the tracking parameters were removed from the system and a canonical tag was implemented as these pages were also found in Google's index. The tag forced a page such as www.domain.com/product123?ref=topnav to be picked up as www.domain.com/product123. So now, there is a 301 to address the upper and lowercase urls and a canonical tag to address the parameters from creating more unnecessary urls. A few questions here: -Is this redunant and can cause confusion to the serps to have both a canonical and 301 redirect on the same page? -Both the 301 and canonical tag were implemented several months ago, yet Google's index is still showing them. Do these have to be manually removed with GWT individually since they are not in a subfolder or directory? Looking forward to your opinions.0 -
Sitemap on a Subdomain
Hi, For various reasons I placed my sitemaps on a subdomain where I keep images and other large files (static.example.com). I then submitted this to Google as a separate site in Webmaster tools. Is this a problem? All of the URLs are for the actual site (www.example.com), the only issue on my end is not being able to look at it all at the same time. But I'm wondering if this would cause any problems on Google's end.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | enotes0 -
Backlinking from a Canonical Page to the Non-Canonical Doman - Wrong Signals?
Hi Mozzers, Let's say you have www.mysite.com/page, which is a duplicate of www.yoursite.com/page. www.yousite.com/page has a rel canonical link identifying www.mysite.com/page as the original source. www.mysite.com/page has a followed backlink going towards www.yousite.com/home-page. mysite.com has a DA of 44
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
yoursite.com has a DA of 33 Google has chosen to index www.yoursite.com/page instead of www.mysite.com/page. Is the followed backlink responsible for the wrong page being indexed? Thanks!0 -
Demote subdomain sitelink?
Google search is creating 4 sitelinks for a website. One of these is the blog (blog.website.com). Webmaster tools allows for site links to be demoted, but there is no way to demote the blog we which we don't want to show up since it is not a "/" extension. Is there a way to remove it as a site link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EugeneF0