Is a Rel="cacnonical" page bad for a google xml sitemap
-
Back in March 2011 this conversation happened.
Rand: You don't want rel=canonicals.
Duane: Only end state URL. That's the only thing I want in a sitemap.xml. We have a very tight threshold on how clean your sitemap needs to be. When people are learning about how to build sitemaps, it's really critical that they understand that this isn't something that you do once and forget about. This is an ongoing maintenance item, and it has a big impact on how Bing views your website. What we want is end state URLs and we want hyper-clean. We want only a couple of percentage points of error.
Is this the same with Google?
-
LOL thanks!
-
You're very welcome.
And just try to think about it this way... every best practice you employ for your site is another best practice your competitors have to employ to keep up with you
-
Yes I understand that. It is just a lot more work for us to do with our site map! Thanks for your advice.
-
To clarify, when I say rel="canonical" pages, I mean pages that are using that link tag to point to another page (i.e., the pages that are NOT the canonical page). These are also the pages that Duane and Rand were talking about.
I am not saying you shouldn't include pages that are included in the actual link tag.
Let's assume you have 3 pages: A, B, and C.
Pages B and C have a rel="canonical" link that points to A.
In this scenario, you would include A in your XML Sitemap (assuming A is a high-quality page that is important to your site), and you would NOT include B and C.
-
I see. but the rel="canonical" pages are good page. I get the broken links and all that part but I guess i do not agree with rel="canonical" as much. I can see their standpoint. Do you do a lot with your site map and assign the different values to different pages?
-
Yes, it is safe to assume that all search engines want your XML Sitemaps to be as clean and accurate as possible.
XML Sitemaps give you an opportunity to tell search engines about your most important pages, and you want to take advantage of this opportunity.
Think about it another way. Let's pretend your site and Google are both real people. In that hypothetical world, Google's first impression of your site is established through your site's XML Sitemaps. If those Sitemaps are full of broken links, redirecting URLs, and rel="canonical" pages, your site has already made a bad first impression ("If this site can't maintain an up-to-date Sitemap, I'm terrified of what I'll find once I get to the actual pages").
On the other hand, if your XML Sitemaps are full of live links that point to your site's most important pages, Google will have a positive first impression and continue on with the relationship
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
-
How google bot see's two the same rel canonicals?
Hi, I have a website where all the original URL's have a rel canonical back to themselves. This is kinda like a fail safe mode. It is because if a parameter occurs, then the URL with the parameter will have a canonical back to the original URL. For example this url: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ has this canonical: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ which is the same since it's an original URL This url https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter has this canonical https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ like i said before, parameters have a rel canonical back to their original url's. SO: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter and this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ both have the same canonical which is this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ Im telling you all that because when roger bot tried to crawl my website, it gave back duplicates. This happened because it was reading the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the original url (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) and the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the url with the parameter (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter) and saw that both were point to the same canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/)... So, i would like to know if google bot treats canonicals the same way. Because if it does then im full of duplicates 😄 thanks.
Technical SEO | | dos06590 -
Automate XML Sitemaps
Quick question, which is the best method that people have for automating sitemaps. We publish around 200 times a day and I would like to make sure as soon as we publish it gets updated in the site map. What is the best method of updating a sitemap so it gets updated immediately after it is published.
Technical SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Why Google ranks a page with Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW?
Hi guys, I was playing with the new OSE when I found out a weird thing: if you Google "performing arts school london" you will see w w w . mountview . org. uk at the 3rd position. The point is that page has "Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", why Google indexed it? Here you can see the robots.txt allows Google to index the URL but not the content, in article they also say the meta robots tag will properly avoid Google from indexing the URL either. Apparently, in my case that page is the only one has the tag "NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", but it's the home page. so I said to myself: OK, perhaps they have just changed that tag therefore Google needs time to re-crawl that page and de-index following the no index tag. How long do you think it will take to don't see that page indexed? Do you think it will effect the whole website, as I suppose if you have that tag on your home page (the root domain) you will lose a lot of links' juice - it's totally unnatural a backlinks profile without links to a root domain? Cheers, Pierpaolo
Technical SEO | | madcow780 -
Do you need an on page site map as well as an XML Sitemap?
Do on page site maps help with SEO or are they more for user experience? We submit and update our XML Sitemaps for the search engines but wondering if /sitemap for users is necessary?
Technical SEO | | bonnierSEO0 -
Would Google Call These Pages Duplicate Content?
Our Web store, http://www.audiobooksonline.com/index.html, has struggled with duplicate content issues for some time. One aspect of duplicate content is a page like this: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/out-of-publication-audio-books-book-audiobook-audiobooks.html. When an audio book title goes out-of-publication we keep the page at our store and display a http://www.audiobooksonline.com/out-of-publication-audio-books-book-audiobook-audiobooks.html whenever a visitor attempts to visit a specific title that is OOP. There are several thousand OOP pages. Would Google consider these OOP pages duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | lbohen0 -
What does the Google Crawler see when crawling this page?
If you look at this page http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/61/185/730/Batteries. You will see we have a vehicle filter on it. Right now you only see a picture of a battery and some bad text that needs to be updated ( We just hired a copywriter!). Our question is when google crawls this site will thy just see this or will they see all the products that appear after you pick a "machine type" "make" "model" and "year" Any help would be great. Right now we think it just sees this main page how we have set things up; however, we know that the crawler is also crawling some ajax. We just want to be sure of things.
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Rel=cannonical vs. noindex.follow for paginated pages
I"m working on a real estate site that has multiple listing pages, e.g. http://www.hhcrealestate.com/manhattan-beach-mls-real-estate-listings I'm trying to get the main result page to rank for that particular geo-keyword, i.e. "manhattan beach homes for sale". I want to make sure all of the individual listings on the paginated pages, 2,3, 4 etc. still get indexed. Is it better to add to all of the paginated pages, i.e.manhattan-beach-mls-real-estate-listings-2, manhattan-beach-mls-real-estate-listings--3, manhattan-beach-mls-real-estate-listings-4, etc. or is it better to add noindex,follow to those pages?
Technical SEO | | fthead91 -
Google is Showing Website as "Untitled"
My freelance designer made some changes to my website and all of a sudden my homepage was showing the title I have in Dmoz. We thought maybe the NOODP tag was not correct, so we edited that a little and now the site is showing as "Untitled". The website is http://www.chemistrystore.com/. Of course he didn't save an old copy that we can revert to. That is a practice that will end. I have no idea why the title and description that we have set for the homepage is not showing in google when it previously was. Another weird thing that I noticed is that when I do ( site:chemistrystore.com ) in Google I get the https version of the site showing with the correct title and description. When I do ( site:www.chemistrystore.com ) in Google I don't have the hompage showing up from what I can tell, but there are 4,000+ pages to the site. My guess is that if it is showing up, it is showing up as "Untitled". My question is.... How can we get Google to start displaying the proper title and description again?
Technical SEO | | slangdon0