Canonical / 301 Redundancy
-
Suppose I have two dynamic URLs that lead to the identical page:
www.example.com/product.php?x=1&y=1
and
www.example.com/product.php?y=1
The x=1 parameter had some historical meaning, but is now unused. All references to the x=1 parameter have been removed from internal links and sitemaps.
I have implemented two solutions:
First, the header of www.example.com/product.php?x=1&y=1 includes:
Second, the .htaccess file includes the following:
Redirect permanent /product.php?x=1&y=1 http://www.example.com/product.php?y=1
Questions:
1. I assume that since canonical is still relatively new, it's best to play it safe and implement both solutions. Is this correct?
2. When I point my browser to www.example.com/product.php?x=1&y=1, it does NOT redirect to www.example.com/product.php?y=1. The address bar continues to show the non-canonical URL. Is this because the canonical tag somehow takes precedence over the 301 redirect?
3. How long will Google Webmaster Tools continue to show these as duplicates, even though I've implemeted BOTH canonical and 301? It's been a few weeks and I thought it would have rolled off by now.
Thanks!
-
Note to self, and to others who see this thread later, the 301 for this situation is:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} x=([0-9]+)&y=([0-9]+)
RewriteRule ^product.php$ http://www.example.com/product.php?y=%2 [r=301,nc]
-
Dr. Pete,
Thanks for the very helpful answer. I've gotten rid of the rel-canonical tag for this part of the site and I'll try to figure out what's up with the 301s.
BTW, I listened to the recorded version of your "future proofing" webinar this morning and learned a lot.
Akira
-
(1) Honestly, I tend not to double-up, if for no other reason that you can't really tell what's work and what isn't. Keep in mind, too, that these tools do have different purposes. 301-redirects impact everyone (users and bots), whereas rel-canonical is only for search. If a 301 is appropriate, then just use a 301.
(2) If the address bar isn't changing, your 301-redirect isn't working. Test it with a header checker:
http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/
A rel-canonical tag will not override browser behavior (at least, not at this point in time).
(3) It can take weeks to clear, and it sounds like your 301 isn't working right, so that's going to exacerbate the problem. The page has to re-crawl and re-cache, and GWT may still show the message for a couple of weeks after that.
Personally, I'd drop the canonical and fix the 301-redirect.
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 and internal links
Hi Mozzers, I was musing about rel=canonical this morning and it occurred to me that I didnt have a good answer to the following question: How does applying a rel=canonical on page A referencing page B as the canonical version affect the treatment of the links on page A? I am thinking of whether those links would get counted twice, or in the case of ver-near-duplicates which may have an extra sentence which includes an extra link, whther that extra link would count towards the internal link graph or not. I suspect that google would basically ignore all the content on page A and only look to page B taking into account only page Bs links. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unirmk0 -
Canonical code set up correctly?
Please let me know if this makes sense. I have a very limited knowledge of technical SEO but I am almost positive that my web developer did something wrong. I have a wordpress blog and he did add canonical code to some of the pages. However he directs the site to the same URL! Does this mean that the canonical code is setup incorrectly and actually harming my SEO performance. Also if I have one webpage with just the first paragraph of a blog post I wrote and a completely seperate page for the blog post itself, could this be considered duplicate content? Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DR700950 -
What things should I consider if I am doing a 301 redirect on only 1 page/blog post?
I wrote a blog post on one of my websites and it got picked up by reddit and I got a bunch of nice backlinks and now that website got a nice boost overall, and especially that blog post page. I now wish I would have posted the article on a different website of mine. I would prefer if this other site was getting the traffic and the good backlinks that I've acquired. What are the pros and cons if I move the content over to my other website, and 301 redirect just that one article to the article location on my other website? The blog post I wrote almost instantly began ranking for certain terms in Google. Ideally I would like my other website to rank for those terms, but I realize there will be some differences as search engines look at the website as a whole and take many factors into consideration. I know there are tons of case studies and information about moving entire sites etc but I couldn't find much on this. Any advice, questions or comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bradbowman
Brad0 -
Using Canonical on home page
Our home page has the canonical tag pointing to itself (something from wordpress i understand). Is there any positive or negative affect that anyone is aware of from having pages canonical'ed to themselves?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
How many pages to 301 Redirect
Hi Mozzers, My site has 11,200 pages indexed in Google and I'm looking to remove some of the lesser content which should probably have been picked up by Panda. However these pages work out to about 1,100 in total and I'm not sure whether to remove these bit by bit or just do it in one fell swoop? Does Google not like a site's indexed pages fluctuating too quickly? Are there any other considerations I should be aware of? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | panini0 -
Where to point Rel = Canonical?
I have a client who is using the rel=canonical tag across their e-commerce site. Here is an example of how it is set up. URLs 1. http://www.beautybrands.com/category/makeup/face/bronzer.do?nType=22. http://www.beautybrands.com/category/makeup/face/bronzer.doThe canonical tag points to the second URL. Both pages are indexed by Google.The first page has a higher page authority (most of the internal site links go to the first URL) than the second one. Should the page with the highest authority be the one that the canonical tag points to? Is there a better way to handle these situations? Does any authority get passed through the tag?Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Posing QU's on Google Variables "aclk", "gclid" "cd", "/aclk" "/search", "/url" etc
I've been doing a bit of stats research prompted by read the recent ranking blog http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables There are a few things that have come up in my research that I'd like to clear up. The below analysis has been done on my "conversions". 1/. What does "/aclk" mean in the Referrer URL? I have noticed a strong correlation between this and "gclid" in the landing page variable. Does it mean "ad click" ?? Although they seem to "closely" correlate they don't exactly, so when I have /aclk in the referrer Url MOSTLY I have gclid in the landing page URL. BUT not always, and the same applies vice versa. It's pretty vital that I know what is the best way to monitor adwords PPC, so what is the best variable to go on? - Currently I am using "gclid", but I have about 25% extra referral URL's with /aclk in that dont have "gclid" in - so am I underestimating my number of PPC conversions? 2/. The use of the variable "cd" is great, but it is not always present. I have noticed that 99% of my google "Referrer URL's" either start with:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
/aclk - No cd value
/search - No cd value
/url - Always contains the cd variable. What do I make of this?? Thanks for the help in advance!0 -
301 Not Allowed...Other Solutions?
A client's site where both the www. and non-www. versions are both being indexed. The non-www. version have has roughly 1000 or so links where the www. version has over twice as much pointing back to the site. In addition, the www. version has higher domain authority. Their programmer has suggested that they can't implement 301's permanent redirects across their site for a few reasons. My question is, what would be the best alternative to block/redirect the non-www. version from being indexed yet still pass link-juice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VidenMarketing0