Removing Canonical Links
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We implemented rel=canonical as we decided to paginate our pages. We then ran some testing and on the whole pagination did not work out so we removed all on-page pagination.
Now, internally when I click for example a link for Widgets I get the /widgets.php but searching through Google I get to /widgets.php?page=all . There are not redirects in place at the moment.
The '?page=all' page has been rated 'A' by the SEOmoz tool under On Page Optimization reports and performs much better than the exact same page without the '?page=all' (the score dips to a 'D' grade) so need to tread carefully so we don't lose the link value.
Can anyone advise us on the best way forward?
Thanks in advance.
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Yeah, your best bet is probably to switch the canonical to the old/main page "/widgets.php" - just removing the canonical tag doesn't always get Google's attention (or, at best, takes quite a while). If you can designate a new canonical, that should speed things up.
Our on-page report may just be looking at the longer version with more content as being a bit better, but it's really tough to say. Without knowing the situation, I'm not clear on how the 2 pages differ or what kind of pagination you were using.
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canonical the page to to widgets.php and address the page=all parameter in GWMT URL parameter handling section.
use the rel prev/next tag for paginating pages not the canonical.- but the main widgets page should be canonicalled to itself to prevent this from happening
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