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.
Two different canonical tags on one page
-
Due to an error, some of my pages now have two canonical tags on them. One is correct and the other goes to a nonsense URL (404 page).
I know I should ideally remove the incorrect ones, but it's a big manual job. Are they doing any harm? Can I just leave them there and let Google figure it out?
The correct ones are higher up in the code. Will this make a difference?
Any help appreciated.
-
Unfortunately, what Google can do and what they actually do can really vary. If you're mixing signals and doubling up the canonicals, the odds that they'll get it right are pretty low, in my experience. I think it's worth the fix, if these are traffic-generating pages.
-
You should certainly fix this. You don't want google having to guess what you are trying to tell them. For the most part they will probably get it right, especially in your case with the 404s. But if this is occurring too frequently then they may begin to ignore your canonicals all together. Or worse, you may loose some google trust.
I'd put this on my fix it list.
-
Thanks Scott. It's only wrong on a few hundred pages and they're all quite deep. If it were wrong on the important pages I'd fix it.
-
You should change it, I'm no canonical expert, but the whole point of having it is to tell google how you want it to show, ex. www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com. If your not going to change it for all of your pages then at least do it for your home page as this is the one that usually gets the most attention.
-
Well that's good news. Think I'll just leave them there then. Thanks!
-
This is stright from Google Webmasters:
"What happens if rel="canonical" points to a non-existent page? Or if more than one page in a set is specified as the canonical version?
We'll do our best to algorithmically determine an appropriate canonical page, just as we've done in the past."
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
Hope that helps
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 -
Rel=Canonical For Landing Pages
We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created. We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale. The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Canonical for duplicate pages in ecommerce site and the product out of stock
I’m an SEO for an ecommerce site that sells shoes I have duplicate pages for different colors of the same product (unique URL for each color), Conventionally I have added canonical tags for each page, which direct to a specific product URL My question is what happens when a product which the googlbot is direct to, is out of stock but is still listed in the canonical tag ?
Technical SEO | | shoesonline0 -
Two META Robots tags on a page - which will win?
Hi, Does anybody know which meta-robots tag will "win" if there is more than one on a page? The situation:
Technical SEO | | jmueller
our CMS is not very flexible and so we have segments of META-Tags on the page that originate from templates.
Now any author can add any meta-tag from within his article-editor.
The logic delivering the pages does not care if there might be more than one meta-robots tag present (one from template, one from within the article). Now we could end up with something like this: Which one will be regarded by google & co?
First?
Last?
None? Thanks a lot,
Jan0 -
Error: Missing Meta Description Tag on pages I can't find in order to correct
This seems silly, but I have errors on blog URLs in our WordPress site that I don't know how to access because they are not in our Dashboard. We are using All in One SEO. The errors are for blog archive dates, authors and just simply 'blog'. Here are samples: http://www.fateyes.com/2012/10/
Technical SEO | | gfiedel
http://www.fateyes.com/author/gina-fiedel/
http://www.fateyes.com/blog/ Does anyone know how to input descriptions for pages like these?
Thanks!!0 -
Home Page .index.htm and .com Duplicate Page Content/Title
I have been whittling away at the duplicate content on my clients' sites, thanks to SEOmoz's pro report, and have been getting push back from the account manager at register.com (the site was built here and the owner doesn't want to move it). He says these are the exact same page and he can't access one to redirect to the other. Any suggestions? The SEOmoz report says there is duplicate content on both these urls: Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/index.htm Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/ Your help is greatly appreciated! Sheryl
Technical SEO | | TOMMarketingLtd.0 -
URL query strings and canonical tag
Hi, I have recently been getting my comparison website redesigned and developed onto wordpress and the site is now 90% complete. Part of the redesign has meant that there are now dynamic urls in the format: http://www.mywebsite.com/10-pounds-productss/?display=cost&value=10 I have other pages similar to this but with different content for the different price ranges and these are linked to from the menus: http://www.mywebsite.com/20-pounds-products/?display=cost&value=20 Now my questions are: 1. I am using Joost's All-in-one SEO plugin and this adds a canonical tag to the page that is pointing to http://www.mywebsite.com/10-pounds-products/ which is the permalink. Is this OK as it is or should i change this to http://www.mywebsite.com/10-pounds-products/?display=cost&value=10 2. Which URL will get indexed, what gets shown as the display URL in the SERPs and what page will users land on? I'm a bit confused so apologies if these seem like silly questions. Thanks
Technical SEO | | bizarro10000
