Reinforcing Rel Canonical? (Fixing Duplicate Content)
-
Hi Mozzers,
We're having trouble with duplicate content between two sites, so we're looking to add some oomph to the rel canonical link elements we put on one of our sites pointing towards the other to help speed up the process and give Google a bigger hint.
Would adding a hyperlink on the "copying" website pointing towards the "original" website speed this process up?
Would we get in trouble if added about 80,000 links (1 on each product page) with a link to the matching product on the other site? For example, we could use text like "Buy XY product on Other Brand Name and receive 10% off!"
-
Have you seen a corresponding drop-off in the ListFinder pages over that time. If the canonical is kicking in, you should see some of those pages fall out as more ConsumerBase pages kick in.
Is there a reason your canonical'ing from the more indexed site to the less indexed one. It could be a mixed signal if Google things that ListFinder is a more powerful or authoritative site. Cross-domain can get tricky fast.
Unfortunately, beyond NOINDEX'ing, it's about your best option, and certainly one of your safest. It's really hard to predict what the combo of cross-domain canonical plus link would do. From a dupe content standpoint, it's risk free. From the standpoint of creating 80K links from one of your sites to another of your sites, it's a little risky (don't want to look like a link network). Since you're only talking two sites, though, it's probably not a huge issue, especially with the canonical already in place.
Google interprets cross-domain canonical heavily, so it can be a little hard to predict and control. Interestingly, the ConsumerBase site has higher Domain Authority, but the page you provided has lower Page Authority than its "sister" page. Might be a result of your internal linking structure giving more power to the ListFinder pages.
-
Great post Peter.
Here are some links of a product that is on both sites. Hopefully this will help you provide some more insight.
http://www.consumerbase.com/mailing-lists/shutterbugsphotography-enthusiasts-mailing-list.html
http://www.listfinder.com/mailing-lists/shutterbugsphotography-enthusiasts-mailing-list.htmlThe ListFinder pages are currently mostly indexed (70k out of 80k) which makes me think they are different enough from one another to not warrant a penalty.
The ConsumerBase pages started indexing well when we added the rel canonical code to LF (went from about 2k pages to 30k in early December, but since 1/2/2013 we have seen a dropoff in indexed pages down to about 5k.
Thanks!
-
With products, it's a bit hard to say. Cross-domain canonical could work, but Google can be a bit finicky about it. Are you seeing the pages on both sides in the Google index, or just one or the other? Sorry, it's a bit hard to diagnose without seeing a sample URL.
If this were more traditional syndicated content, you could set a cross-domain canonical and link the copy back to the source. That would provide an additional signal of which site should get credit. With your case, though, I haven't seen a good example of that - I don't think it would be harmful, though (to add the link, that is).
If you're talking about 80K links, then you've got 80K+ near-duplicate product pages. Unfortunately, it could go beyond just having one or the other version get filtered out. This could trigger a Panda or Panda-like penalty against the site in general. The cross-domain canonical should help prevent this, whereas the links probably won't. I do think it's smart to be proactive, though.
Worst case, you could META NOINDEX the product pages on one site - they'd still be available to users, but wouldn't rank. I think the cross-domain canonical is probably preferable here, but if you ran into trouble, META NOINDEX would be the more severe approach (and could help solve that trouble).
-
Yes, sir - that would be correct.
www.consumerbase.com and www.listfinder.com.
The sites are not 100% identical, just the content on the product pages.
-
are these two sites on the same root domain? it seems like most of the feedback you're getting are from people who are assuming they are however, it sounds to me like there are two separate domains
-
Zora,
Google accepts cross domain canonical as long as the pages have more similar content.
It is not necessary to add hyperlink pointing to canonical page. If your sites are crawler friendly, canonical hints will change search results very quickly.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
Ensure that Google doesn't find any issue with your Sitemaps. If you add products frequently, submit the updated Sitemap following the same schedule.
All the best.
-
I am sorry i am not understanding why you need a rel = in this matter if the sites are two different sites?
What is your end goal ?
-
We chose rel canonical because we still want users to be able to visit and navigate through site 2.
They are both e-commerce sites with similar products, not exactly identical sites.
-
Zora. Totally understand, but my input and what Majority of people do is redirect the traffic.
A server side htaccess 301 Redirect is your BEST choice here.
Why dont you want o use a 301 and prefer a Rel, curious on what your take is on this.
and Thanks for the rel update info i didnt know
-
Thanks for the info Hampig, I'll definitely take a look.
Rel Canonical actually works cross domain now, Google updated it from when it originally came out.
-
Zora hope you are doing well.
I came across this video about a few weeks ago. I think this is suppose to be found under Webmaster tools although i have not used it, i think it might be the best solution to get googles attention to portions of the pages and what they are suppose to be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrEJds3QeTw
Ok but i am confused a bit. You have two different domains ?
or two version of the same domain?
Because from the sound of it you have two different domains and using rel = con wont work and you would have to do a 301 redirect. Even for my sites when i change the pages around i use 301 redirect for the same existing site.
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
-
Tags: 301 Redirect, Rel Canonical, or Leave Them Alone?
The title is pretty self explanatory ... we have cornerstone pages ( such as a page for "Widget A") that rank for a certain keyword and then relevant articles that all link to that particular cornerstone page. Each of those articles has the same tag ("Widget A") to tie them together. If you click on that tag, it creates a list of all articles with that tag. We think that this may be siphoning off some of that keyword Google Juice from our Widget A cornerstone page. Our question is, should we 301 redirect that tag to point to the Widget A cornerstone page, use a rel canonical pointing to the Widget A cornerstone page, or just leave it alone like we are doing now? Our goal is to have the Widget A cornerstone page receive the most Google Juice possible and not be diminished by the tags. Note* - We don't want to stop Google from crawling the tags because some of our tags rank highly for other keywords. Also, we tried 301 redirecting the tags before and our ranking dropped significantly ... however, we made a lot of site changes at the same time so we are not sure if the drop in rank was due to redirecting the tags or the site changes. Help please ... thanks in advance 😉
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Humanovation0 -
Appropriate use of rel canonical
Hey Guys,I'm a bit stuck. My on-page grade indicated the following two issues and I need to find how how to fix both issues.If you have a solution, could you please let me know how to address these issues? It's all a bit intimidating at the moment!!Thank you so much..****************************************************************************************************************************************Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL. Recommendation: We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. No More Than One Canonical URL Tag The canonical URL tag is meant to be employed only a single time on an individual URL (much like the title element or meta description). To ensure the search engines properly parse the canonical source, employ only a single version of this tag. Recommendation: Remove all but a single canonical URL tag
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StoryScout1 -
Why are these pages considered duplicate content?
I have a duplicate content warning in our PRO account (well several really) but I can't figure out WHY these pages are considered duplicate content. They have different H1 headers, different sidebar links, and while a couple are relatively scant as far as content (so I might believe those could be seen as duplicate), the others seem to have a substantial amount of content that is different. It is a little perplexing. Can anyone help me figure this out? Here are some of the pages that are showing as duplicate: http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Seth+Green/?bioid=5554 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Solomon+Northup/?bioid=11758 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/?mediatype=audio+books&bioid=3665 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Marcus+Rediker/?bioid=10145 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Robin+Miles/?bioid=2075
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DownPour0 -
Moving some content to a new domain - best practices to avoid duplicate content?
Hi We are setting up a new domain to focus on a specific product and want to use some of the content from the original domain on the new site and remove it from the original. The content is appropriate for the new domain and will be irrelevant for the original domain and we want to avoid creating completely new content. There will be a link between the two domains. What is the best practice for this to avoid duplicate content and a potential Panda penalty?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Citybase0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Hey Everyone, I have a question regarding duplicate content. If your site is penalized for duplicate content, is it just the pages with the content on it that are affected or is the whole site affected? Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Dropped ranking - Penguin penalty or duplicate content issue?
Just this weekend a page that had been ranking well for a competitive term fell completely out of the rankings. There are two possible causes and I'm trying to figure out which it is, so I can take action. I found out that I had accidentally put a canonical on another page that was for the same page as the one that dropped out of the rankings. If there are two pages with the same canonical tag with different content, will google drop both of them from the index? The other possibility is that this is a result of the recent Penguin update. The page that dropped has a high amount of exact anchor text. As far as I can tell, there were no other pages with any penalties from the Penguin update. One last question: The page completely dropped from the search index. If this were a Penguin issue, would it have dropped out completely,or just been penalized with a drop in position? If this is a result of the conflicting canonical tags, should I just wait for it to reindex, or should I request a reconsideration of the page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gametv0 -
Accepting RSS feeds. Does it = duplicate content?
Hi everyone, for a few years now I've allowed school clients to pipe their news RSS feed to their public accounts on my site. The result is a daily display of the most recent news happening on their campuses that my site visitors can browse. We don't republish the entire news item; just the headline, and the first 150 characters of their article along with a Read more link for folks to click if they want the full story over on the school's site. Each item has it's own permanent URL on my site. I'm wondering if this is a wise practice. Does this fall into the territory of duplicate content even though we're essentially providing a teaser for the school? What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterdbaron0 -
I have a duplicate content problem
The website guy that made the website for my business Premier Martial Arts Austin disappeared and didn't set up that www. was to begin each URL, so I now have a duplicate content problem and don't want to be penalized for it. I tried to show in Webmaster tools the preferred setup but can't get it to OK that I'm the website owner. Any idea as what to do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OhYeahSteve0