Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Digital Marketing
    3. Web Design
    4. Does it do harm if you add a rel="canonical" tag on a page that doesn't need it?

    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.

    Does it do harm if you add a rel="canonical" tag on a page that doesn't need it?

    Web Design
    3
    5
    946
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • jaychow
      jaychow last edited by

      If a page is clearly unique and there is obviously no canonical tag needed, does it hurt anything if one has been added?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MattAntonino
        MattAntonino @jaychow last edited by

        In my opinion, you want the juice for each article to stay with each article.  I wouldn't redirect all your article juice back to the main /blog page.  For me, each unique page (and article) gets its own canonical link and one line = one set of information.  Article about oranges, article about apples, both canonical links.  You should only get juice from same or similar pages, such as

        yoursite.com/

        yoursite.com/index.php

        www.yoursite.com/index.php

        www.yoursite.com/

        But not

        yoursite.com/oranges/

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • jaychow
          jaychow @MattAntonino last edited by

          hey matt, thanks for the response.  let me ask you this.  i have a blog page with a bunch of snippets, that when clicked, lead to the full articles, (each have their own custom page/url).  if i want all the juice to go to the main blog page i don't want to have canonical tags on each individual post page, right?

          MattAntonino 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • TakeshiYoung
            TakeshiYoung @MattAntonino last edited by

            Agreed. You page can sometimes end up with query parameters as well when people link to your site, and having the canonical in place will help you avoid having duplicate content.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • MattAntonino
              MattAntonino last edited by

              It shouldn't hurt you if it doesn't need it but assuming you have www and non-www, wouldn't that part of the canonical always help anyways?  By default, you would have

              http://www.yoursite.com/notagneeded

              http://yoursite.com/notagneeded

              and if you're on most common CMSs,

              http://www.yoursite.com/notagneeded/index.php or index.html or index.asp

              It would actually be pretty rare to have a page with absolutely no use for rel=canonical but I don't see why it would hurt at all.

              TakeshiYoung jaychow 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 3
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Frankie-BTDublin

                Reason for robots.txt file blocking products on category pages?

                Hi I have a website with thosands of products. On the category pages, all the products are linked to with the code “?cgid” in the URL. But “?cgid” is also blocked in the robots.txt file for some reason. So I'm thinking it's stopping all my products getting crawled by Google. Am I right here? Is there any reason why a website would want to limit so many URL's? I'm only here a week and the sites getting great traffic, so don't want to go breaking it!!! Thanks

                Web Design | | Frankie-BTDublin
                0
              • gatorpool

                Do we need both an .XML Sitemap and a .aspx sitemap?

                Hi Mozers, We recently switched servers and it came to my attention that we have two sitemaps a XML version of the sitemap and a .aspx version of the sitemap. This came to light as the .aspx version of the sitemap is causing the site to come to a screeching halt as it has some complex code and lists over 80,000 products. My question is do we need both versions of the sitemap? My understanding is that the XML version is for Search Engine bots and the .aspx version is for customers. I can't imagine that anyone is using our .aspx version as it is basically a page with 80,000 links and it's buried away on the site, so we were hoping to kill off the .aspx version of the sitemap and keep the .xml version for Search Engine Bots. I wanted to check here first to make sure we did not any negative search engine implications. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks so much! Patrick

                Web Design | | gatorpool
                0
              • Dino64

                2 Menu links to same page. Is this a problem?

                One of my clients wants to link to the same page from several places in the navigation menu. Does this create any crawl issues or indexing problems? It's the same page (same url) so there is no duplicate content problems. Since the page is promotional, the client wants the page accessible from different places in the nav bar. Thanks, Dino

                Web Design | | Dino64
                0
              • Atlanta-SMO

                ECWID How to fix Duplicate page content and external link issue

                I am working on a site that has a HUGE number of duplicate pages due to ECWID ecommerce platform.  The site is built with Joomla!  How can I rectify this situation?  The pages also show up as "external " links on crawls...  Is it the ECWID platform?  I have never worked on a site that uses this. Here is an example of a page with the issue (there are 6280 issues) URL: http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spare-parts?Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560081

                Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO
                0
              • TommyTan

                Question on Breadcrumb and Canonical

                Hi SEOmozers, I have another question.  =]  Thanks in  advance. First question: How important is the breadcrumb for SEO? I know that breadcrumb makes better UX because it shows how the visitor landed on this page and the breadcrumb may show up in the search engine.  But other than that, how important is it? Second Question: If I have a page that can be found via 2 locations, how should I handle this in regards to breadcrumb? For example, I have page A.  You can access page A via Category A and Category B.  Therefore, what I did was list Page A under Category A and when someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it will redirect to the page A that was found via Category A. The problem is on page A, the breadcrumb is Home > Category A > Page A.  So if someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it redirects and the breadcrumb shows Home > Category A > Page A. What should I do with the breadcrumb for Category B > Page A? Should I create another page A and just use canonical on it? Should I create another page A but do not index it? or leave it as is? 1 Page A, can be access via 2 categories. Please advise. Thank you!

                Web Design | | TommyTan
                0
              • EcommerceSite

                What is the best tool to view your page as Googlebot?

                Our site was done with asp.net and a lot of scripting. I want to see what Google can see and what it can't. What is the best tool that duplicates Googlebot? I have found several but they seem old or inaccurate.

                Web Design | | EcommerceSite
                0
              • vijayvasu

                Page Size

                Hello Mozers, What is the best page size ( or the max page size ie KB ) for a home page or a 2nd level page. Thank you - I appreciate you looking at this question. Vijay

                Web Design | | vijayvasu
                0
              • sanchez1960

                Footer backlinks for sites I've developed

                I link back to my website via my company name on the footers of sites I develop.  Lately I've been changing this to my keyword and mixing and matching.  This has been done for new sites I create and old sites I've not seen any benefit so far after a couple of months. Most my clients are hosted on the same server as my main site that it links back to. 1. Is this a bad idea to link back on the same IP?
                2. Is footer backlinks to the main developer going to annoy Google?
                3. Should I change my main site's server, will it help? All my competitors seem to do it and as far as I can tell they seem to get better results than I do.  Because I'm now changing them the reason I see no benefit? Thanks

                Web Design | | sanchez1960
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.