E Commerce product page canonical and indexing + URL parameters
-
Hi,
I'm having some issues on the best way to handle site structure. The technical side of SEO isn't my strong point so I thought I'd ask the question before I make the decision.
Two examples for you to look at.
This is a new site http://www.tester.co.uk/electrical/multimeters/digital.
By selecting another page to see more products you get this url string where/p/2. This page also has the canonical tag relating to this page and not the original page.
Now if say for example I exclude this parameter (where) in webmaster tools will I be stopping Google indexing the products on the other pages where/p/2, 3, 4 etc. and the same if I make the canonical point to multimeters/digital/ instead of multimeters/digital/where/p/2 etc.?
I have the same question applied to the older site http://www.pat-services.co.uk/digital-multimeters-26.html. which no longer has an canonical tags at all.
The only real difference is Google is indexing http://www.pat-services.co.uk/digital-multimeters-26.html?page=2 but not http://www.tester.co.uk/electrical/multimeters/digital/where/p/2
Thanks for help in advance
-
If you're not experiencing any serious problems and just want to prevent future issues, I'd probably use rel=prev/next here:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
It was designed specifically for paginated content and won't block your link-juice flow to deeper pages. Google has in the past said you can canonical to the "View All", but don't canonical back to page one. I've heard mixed results on the "View All" technique.
One thing, though - you currently have all these pages NOINDEX,FOLLOW'ed, so it's kind of a moot point. What you could do is just lift the NOINDEX on page 1 of results and keep it for pages 2+. That may be your least risky move at this point.
-
Canonicals don't prevent anyone from indexing the page. Canonicals let you select which duplicate pages show up in Google (as opposed to letting Google pick for you). If you want the page to never be indexed you can use a robots NOINDEX meta tag or a robots.txt file.
I don't know if I understand the rest of your question, tho. Are you asking if you should canonical your pagination to the main category landing page? If so, unless the content is clearly duplicate, I don't know that it will make a lot of difference. Remember, canonicals just shape what shows on your site. It could be advantageous to canonical your pagination but what if what I was searching for was on page 4? Could also hurt you if not done properly.
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
-
No Index No follow instead of Rel canoncical on product pages
Hi all, we handle our product pages no with rel canonical now, we have 1 url that is indexed http://www.prams.net/cam-combi-family the other colours have different urls like http://www.prams.net/cam-combi-family-3-in-1-pram-reversible-seat-car-seat-grey-d which canonicalize to the indexed page. Google still crawls all those pages. For crawl budget reasons we want to use "no index, no follow" instead on these pages (the pages for the other colours)? Google would then crawl fewer pages more often? Does this make sense? Are their any downsides doing it? Thanks in advance Dieter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Storesco1 -
Putting rel=canonical tags on blogpost pointing to product pages
I came across an article mentioning this as a strategy for getting product pages (which are tough to get links for) some link equity. See #21: content flipping: https://www.matthewbarby.com/customer-acquisition-strategies Has anyone done this? Seems like this isn't what the tag is meant for, and Google may see this as deceptive? Any thoughts? Jim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jim_shook0 -
What is the best practice for URLs for E-commerce products in multiple categories?
Hello all! I have always worked successfully with SEO on E-commerce sites, however we are currently revamping an older site for a client and so I thought I'd turn to the community to ask what the best practices that you guys are experiencing for url structures at the moment. Obviously we do not wish to create duplicate content and so the big question is, what would you guys do for the very best structure for URLs on an E-commerce site that has products in multiple categories? Let's imagine we are selling toy cars. I have a sports car for sale, so naturally it can go in the sports cars category and it could also go in to the convertibles category too. What is the best way you have found recently that works and increases rankings, but does not create duplicate content? Thanks in advance! 🙂 Kind Regards, JDM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hatfish0 -
Huge e-commerce site migration - what to do with product pages?
My very large e-commerce client is about to undergo a site migration in which every product page URL will be changing. I am already planning my 301 redirect process for the top ~1,000 pages on the site (categories, products, and more) but this will not account for the more than 1,000 products on the site. The client specified that they don't want to implement much more than 1,000 redirects so as to avoid impacting site performance. What is the best way to handle these pages without causing hundreds of 404 errors on site migration day? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
When removing a product page from an ecommerce site?
What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site? If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine A. block it out in the robot.txt B. let it 404
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
E-commerce Site - Filter Pages
Hi, We have a client who has a fairly large e-commerce site that went live quite recently. The site is near enough fully indexed by Google, but one thing I've noticed is that filtered search results pages are being indexed, all with duplicate page titles. Obviously this is an issue that needs to be looked at ASAP. My questions is this - would we be better tweaking site settings so that page titles are constructed from the filters (brand/price/size) and therefore unique (and useful for searchers who are after a specific brand or size of a given item). Or should we rel=canonical the filtered pages so that they are eventually dropped from the index (the safer of the two options)? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasarrow0 -
Canonical issue with my Home Page
Hi, My site has several canonical issues that should be fixed. http://www.crosscountryallied.com For my Home Page, more links are pointing at www.crosscountryallied.com/ (887) than http:// http://www.crosscountryallied.com/ctAlliedWebSite (27). It is recommended that I implement a 301 redirect to recapture a significant amount of link value. The following lists show the most common canonicalization errors that can be produced when using default settings on my web server: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6 (IIS): http://www.crosscountryallied.com/ http://www.crosscountryallied.com/default.jsp (or .jsp depending on the version) http://crosscountryallied.com/ http://crosscountryallied.com/default.jsp or any combination with different capitalization. Each of these URLs spreads out the value of backlinks to our homepage. Should I just redirect them to: http://www.crosscountryallied.com and add a canonical tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
Pages un-indexed in my site
My current website www.energyacuity.com has had most pages indexed for more than a year. However, I tried cache a few of the pages, and it looks the only one that is now indexed by Goggle is the homepage. Any thoughts on why this is happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abernatj0