Canonical tags

[bele]

In previous we had issues with capital letters in page urls. So we made a 301 redirection to lower case page url. But I read there that it's not good idea to use 301 redirection, better solution for that canonical tag. So we placed canonical url tak to lower case page url... So after week, in google webmaster tools I see around 60k os dublicate pages. Why google don't see canonical tag?

Thank you

[RyanKent]

**google bot crawled our new pages yesterday, canonical tag was placed maybe week ago. **

The canonical tag which is providing the adjustment is the one on the old page, not the new one. In order to fully update Google needs to crawl both the old and new pages.

So it should see this tag, but looks like they ignore this tag.

That is not true. Your understanding of how the process works is not complete. You are not using the best solution and you are expecting results way too fast.

301 redirection is not good idea as we loose ~10% of link juice, that's why it's recommended to use canonical.

You lose a small amount of link juice when performing a redirect. That amount is estimated as between 1 and 10%.

You lose the same amount when using a canonical tag.

All of the above information is correct, but I sense you are convinced otherwise so perhaps this video from Matt Cutts will change your mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5UL3lzBOA

[bele]

google bot crawled our new pages yesterday, canonical tag was placed maybe week ago. So it should see this tag, but looks like they ignore this tag. We do not block urls in robots.txt.  301 redirection is not good idea as we loose ~10% of link juice, that's why it's recommended to use canonical.

[zeepartner]

Personally, I'd try to eradicate the problem at the root. Make sure your CMS does not generate any URLs in upper case letters at all, and you'll have the best solution for this problem!

[RyanKent]

I am not sure where you got the idea the canonical tag would be a better solution. Faced with the situation you shared, I would use the 301 redirect.

A canonical tag is best when you need to maintain more then one version of a URL. For example, if you sell radio controlled cars on your site it may be a good idea to list it under /toys/radio-controlled-car and also under gifts/radio-controlled-car. One of those pages would be the primary page which the other would be duplicate content. You can use a canonical tag to let search engines know which is the primary page.

In your case, there is no reason to maintain the old page with the upper-case URL. Therefore I would use a 301 redirect and only offer the new page on your site.

So after week, in google webmaster tools I see around 60k os dublicate pages. Why google don't see canonical tag?

For starters, expect it to take a month for Google to see all the pages of a large site. Google will crawl a small percentage of your site each day.

There could be various issues with your site which can affect Google's ability to see the change. For example, if you block the pages with robots.txt, Google would not see the canonical tag.

My recommendation would be to implement the 301 redirect then submit an updated sitemap to Google. The next step is to wait 30 days.

[matbennett]

Google does seem to take a while with canonical tags.  However, it sounds like a 301 might be the better choice in these circumstances.

When choosing between 301 & canonical, the issue for me is the user experience. If the 2 URLs show different content and the user would expect to be able to find either set then I'd go with canonical. Otherwise it is 301.  If you are just trying to stop issues with capitalisation in URLs then really it should be a 301.