Open Site Explorer Question

[IOSC]

In OSE I have 3 of my top 5 pages as store.com, store.com/Default.asp, and store.com/default.asp -- I have a canonical version of at store.com/default.asp.

I have inbound links coming to all three urls -- b/c OSE is listing these as seperate pages does that mean the link juice is not being consolidated?  Or is this not something to worry about?

[IOSC]

Thanks for the reply,

I actually noticed something after testing this the internal linking ...the company logo points to default.asp and the sitewide 'home' points to /...I agree that that should be fixed.  Now the next question is what the deuce is Default.asp?

[IOSC]

Thanks for the reply... the problem is that the CMS that hosts the store cannot 301 from default.asp to /.  The strongest signal it can send on the homepage is a canonical link.

[Chris.Menke]

You should go ahead and 301 redirect your different home pages to a single one.  If not, your problem of getting links  to all 3 may not cease.  I'm not sure, however how OSE handles canonicalization if the pages are not redirected.  Anyone else out there know?

[MichaelYork]

Here is a decent thread on this question regarding link juice from canonical links:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/do-canonical-tags-pass-all-of-the-link-juice-onto-the-url-they-point-to

Here is the response from SEOmoz staff member Dr. Peter J. Meyers:

"I have to disagree about link juice. In many cases, canonical tags will work much like 301-redirects, and do seem to pass link-juice. I've even seen experiments where people used canonical tags to move an entire domain. I wouldn't recommend it (except in rare cases), but it seemed to work.

I am concerned, though, that you're linking internally to one version, but then using canonical to point to another version. I find that's a bad idea - while it sometimes works, you're sending a mixed signal, and it can cause problems for your SEO efforts. I personally think that a truly canonical URL should be used consistently across the site, including in internal links. Internal links are one of your strongest canonicalization cues.

Unfortunately, it's hard to say if link-juice is being passed, given the mixed signal. I'm afraid there's no great way to measure it, at least on the level of the individual link. I should add that Google also isn't a big fan of setting a canonical to page 1 of search results. They'd generally rather you canonical to a "View All" or use rel=prev/next. Canonical isn't always a good bet for pagination these days."

Hope this helps out!