Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Diagnosing Canonical Errors Is Screaming frog reliable?
-
Morning from suny & warm wetherby UK
On this page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/ screaming frog is citing a canonical error but I'm confused as this piece of code is in place:
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage" />
So my question is please - "Does this page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/ have a caninical error or is screaming frog useless?
Other examples where screaming frog is picking up canonical errors include:
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/buying-a-home/right-to-manage/Oh forgot to say the preffered version is http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage/
Any insights welcvome
-
Hey,
Long time since the Question, I was just wondering if you worked it out or not.
Gr.,
Istvan
-
I think Screaming Frog is just warning you that the canonical version doesn't seem to match the display URL. They can't really tell (we have the same problem in SEOmoz tools) what the "right" canonical is - they can just warn of a mismatch.
I'm a bit confused as to the purpose of the dual URLs here. The best canonical implementation is to use one URL. The canonical tag can act as a band-aid, but consistency is still the best defense. Having multiple paths to the same page is rarely beneficial.
-
Having spoke to oiur internal helpdesk (Who I trust & do know what theyre talking about) theyve taken a look at:
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/footer-links/left/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/buying-a-home/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage/
and I'm afraid they have a different perspective which is they see no canonical problem
Hey ho think I'll just set my head on fire then maybe things will be more clearer
-
Hi Istvan - your advice is good but ive just discovered its not been implemented! Time to kick some ass, I'll update you
-
Hey,
Any news on how it went? I am curious if that was the problem or not.
Gr.,
Istvan
-
Hey,
Maybe this helps you a littlebit: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seos-guide-to-http-status-codes
Dr. Pete's article explains well how the status codes work.
Gr.,
Istvan
-
Wow great anser, I'm on to this now & will updat you with how things went
-
Hey there!
I think I have found what your problem is with you canonical link
In your code you have:
And probably you are somewhere forcing the URls to have a / at the end.
So basically you are confusing browsers and search engine bots, because they now cannot tell which is the real version:
SE enters the page. Then it sees that the right version should be the one WITHOUT a "/" at the end, then that pages has a 301 redirect to the version which HAS a "/" at the end of the URL (but that has a canonical which points out that the preffered version should be ). So it is a non-ending circle.
So if you add a / to the end of your URl, your problem should be solved.
Final thought: Screaming Frog is working well.
I hope this was a solution.
Cheers,
Istvan
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
-
Do Canonical Tags Pass Link Juice?
I have an ecommerce website where some pages link to a product page with a different URL. EXAMPLE: 1: /category/product1.html (not indexed by Google) with canonical pointing to product1.html Other page link to the product like below. 2: product1.html (indexed by Google) Now the question is, does 1: pass any link juice to product1.html or not? Is it worth to change everything and link only to one URL? My site is running on Magento!
Technical SEO | | bill3690 -
URL has caps, but canonical does not. Now what?
Hi, Just started working with a site that has the occasional url with a capital, but then the url in the canonical as lower case. Neither, when entered in a browser, resolves to the other. It's a Shopify site. What do you think I should do?
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
404 errors
Hi I am getting these show up in WMT crawl error any help would be very much appreciated | ?escaped_fragment=Meditation-find-peace-within/csso/55991bd90cf2efdf74ec3f60 | 404 | 12/5/15 |
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve
| | 2 | mobile/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 3 | ?escaped_fragment=Tips-for-a-balanced-lifestyle/csso/1 | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 4 | ?escaped_fragment=My-favorite-yoga-spot/csso/5598e2130cf2585ebcde3b9a | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 5 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6 | 404 | 11/29/15 |
| | 6 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Tag/yoga | 404 | 11/30/15 |
| | 7 | ?escaped_fragment=Inhale-exhale-and-once-again/csso/2 | 404 | 11/27/15 |
| | 8 | ?escaped_fragment=classes/covl | 404 | 10/29/15 |
| | 9 | m/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 10 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Page/1 | 404 | 11/30/15 | | |0 -
Screaming Frog Content Showing charset=UTF-8
I am running a site through Screaming Frog and many of the pages under "Content" are reading text/html; charset=UTF-8. Does this harm ones SEO and what does this really mean? I'm running his site along with this competitors and the competitors seems very clean with content pages reading text/html. What does one do to change this if it is a negative thing? Thank you
Technical SEO | | seoessentials0 -
Duplicate title-tags with pagination and canonical
Some time back we implemented the Google recommendation for pagination (the rel="next/prev"). GWMT now reports 17K pages with duplicate title-tags (we have about 1,1m products on our site and about 50m pages indexed in Google) As an example we have properties listed in various states and the category title would be "Properties for Sale in [state-name]". A paginated search page or browsing a category (see also http://searchengineland.com/implementing-pagination-attributes-correctly-for-google-114970) would then include the following: The title for each page is the same - so to avoid the duplicate title-tags issue, I would think one would have the following options: Ignore what Google says Change the canonical to http://www.site.com/property/state.html (which would then only show the first XX results) Append a page number to the title "Properties for Sale in [state-name] | Page XX" Have all paginated pages use noindex,follow - this would then result in no category page being indexed Would you have the canonical point to the individual paginated page or the base page?
Technical SEO | | MagicDude4Eva2 -
Adding Rel Canonical to multiple pages
Hi, Our CMS generates a lot of duplicate content, (Different versions of every page for 3 different font sizes). There are many other reasons why we should drop this current CMS and go with something else, and we are in the process of doing that. But for now, does anyone know how would I do the following: I've created a spreadsheet that contains the following: Column 1: rel="canonical" tag for URL Column 2: Duplicate Content URL # 1 Column 3: Duplicate Content URL # 2 Column 4: Duplicate Content URL # 3 I want to add the tag from column 1 into the head of every page from column 2,3, and 4. What would be a fast way to do this considering that I have around 1800 rows. Check the screenshot of the builtwith.com result to see more information about the website if that helps. Farris bxySL
Technical SEO | | jdossetti0 -
Hreflang on non-canonical pages
Hi! I've been trying to figure out what is the best way to solve this dilemma with duplicate content and multiple languages across domains. 1 product info page 2 same product but GREEN
Technical SEO | | LarsEriksson
3 same product but RED
4 same product but YELLOW **Question: ** Since pages 2,3,4 just varies slightly I use the canonical tag to indicate they are duplicates of page 1. Now I also want to indicate there are other language versions with the_ rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _element. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on the canonical page only pointing to the canonical page with "x" language. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages pointing to the canonical page with the "x" language? Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages and then point it to the translated page (even if it is not a canonical page) ? /Lars0 -
Best 404 Error Checker?
I have a client with a lot of 404 errors from Web Master Tools, and i have to go through and check each of the links because Some redirect to the correct page Some redirect to another url but its a 404 error Some are just 404 errors Does anyone know of a tool where i can dump all of the urls and it will tell me If the url is redirected, and to where if the page is a 404 or other error Any tips or suggestions will be really appreciated! Thanks SEO Moz'rs
Technical SEO | | anchorwave0