Rel=canonical Notice
-
In the Crawl Diagnostics report we see there 314 Rel Canonical notices. We use the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin and noticed that the URL is the exact same as the Tag value. When looking into the issue more, I see that the rel canonical tag is pointing to the same page as itself. For example, on the www.domain.com/blog/ page, there is a link rel="canonical" href="/blog/".
- Is this an issue that needs to be fixed?
- How can it be fixed?
- Will this cause any potential ranking issues?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-
Ah, yes. Since the tag just "represents" the URL that should be used for the content, it doesn't produce an endless loop. Redirects (301 or 302) produce loops from time to time, but that is another issue. Good question to ask and good that you are looking at everything to make sure your site is healthy.
-
Thank you very much for your help. I just thought it was odd to have a rel canonical tag that pointed to itself. Seems like it would be an endless loop. Great to hear that this is not a concern and can be disregarded.
-
Hello!
It sounds like there are a few questions here.
First, let me clarify that the 314 Rel Canonical notices are just that - notices. They are there to let you know the canonical link elements are present and also the tag value or where they point to.
Second, in most cases, the tag values match the page URL. Canonical link elements are used to identify the URL search engines should use for the page no matter how the URL looks.
I don't think you have any issues that need to be fixed as long as you've confirmed the canonical link element tag values match the page you are reviewing. You shouldn't see any ranking issues.
Edit: Looks like Jesse chimed in as I was typing up a response. What he has said is correct, you should be fine :).
-
Nope, doesn't need to be fixed. There's nothing wrong with this practice, especially for a Wordpress site (imo).
The notices that moz tools are giving you are just that - to make you aware that those canonical tags exist. They aren't warnings or errors, just notices to draw your attention to canonicals in case you ever wanted to look into them or ensure they were correct.
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
-
Crawl Diagnostics - 350 Critical errors? But I used rel-canonical links
Hello Mozzers, We launched a new website on Monday and had our first MOZ crawl on 01/07/15 which came back with 350+ critical errors. The majority of these were for duplicate content. We had a situation like this for each gym class: GLOBAL YOGA CLASS (canonical link / master record) YOGA CLASS BROMLEY YOGA CLASS OXFORD YOGA CLASS GLASGOW etc All of these local Yoga pages had the canonical link deployed. So why is this regarded as an error by MOZ? Should I have added robots NO INDEX instead? Would think help? Very scared our rankings are gonna get effected 😞 Ben
Moz Pro | | Bendall0 -
I have double-checked the rel canonical is properly employed on our page but the On Page Grader says it's not working?
I have double-checked the rel canonical is properly employed on our page but the On Page Grader says it's not working Here is the URL - http://www.solidconcepts.com/industries/aerospace-parts-manufacturing/ What is wrong with how we are doing things?
Moz Pro | | StratasysDirectManufacturing0 -
Rel Canonical
Just had my site crawled by Moz Pro for the 2nd time and its flagged up 925 Rel Canonical issues. Most of the pages are similar but with different content. Please can someone tell me what i need to do to sort this issue...? www.indigocarhire.co.uk Thanks
Moz Pro | | RGOnline0 -
Duplicate titles reported with canonical
Hi Mozzers, In the reports it is saying that I have some duplicate content and titles even though there is a canonical tag on them, is anyone else getting this?
Moz Pro | | KarlBantleman0 -
Crawl Report Re-direct Notice?
Just trying to understand if this is bad or not. The crawl report has picked up that my website is redirecting (301) from http://mysite.com to http://www.mysite.com - under Crawl Notices (blue section). Is this the wrong way to do it as we wanted the www domain version? Is that why SEOMoz has flagged it ?
Moz Pro | | Ubique0 -
Google Algorithm Update July 30, 2012 - Anyone else notice a major drop in keyword rankings
From July 30th to the 31st many of my keyword rankings in Google plumited 30 spots or more. Has anyone else notice this on their site? Does anyone have any idea for the presumed penalty? I can PM my site information if needed for further assistance. As always thank you for the assistance, and any help in this matter is greatly appreciated!
Moz Pro | | BethA1 -
Some questions on Canonical tag AND 301 redirect
Hi everyone, I'm new here - always loved SEOMoz and glad to be part of the Pro community now. I have 2 questions regarding the Canonical URL tag. Some background info: We used to run an OsCommerce store, and recently migrated to Magento. In doing so, we right away created 301 redirects of the old category pages (OsCommerce) to the new category pages (Magento) via the Magento admin. Example: www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
Moz Pro | | yacpro13
301 redicrected to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html In Magento admin, we have enabled the Canonical tag for all product and category pages. Here's how Magento sets up the Canonical tag: The URL of interest which we want to rank is:
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html However Magento sets up the canonical tag on this page to point to:
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html When using the SEOMoz On Page Report Card, it pick this up as an error because the Canonical tag is pointing to a different URL. However, if we dig a little deeper, we see that the URL being pointed to
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
has a 301 redirect to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html
which is the URL we wan to rank. So because we set up a 301 redirect of the old-page to the new-page, on the new-page the canonical tag points to the old-page. Question 1)
What are you opinions on this? Do you think this method of setting up the Canonical tag is acceptable? Second question... We use pagination for category pages, so if we have 50 products in one category, we would have 5 pages of 10 products. The URL's would be: www.example.com/new-widget-category.html (which is the SAME as ?p=1)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=2
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=3
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=4
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=5 Now ALL the URLs above have the canonical tag set as:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/new-widget-category" /> However, the content of each page (page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is different because different products are displayed. So far most what I read regarding the Canonical tag is that it is used for pages that have the same content but different URLs. I would hope that Google would combine the content of all 5 pages and view the result as a single URL www.example.com/new-widget-category Question 2) Is using the canonical tag appropriate in the case described above? Thanks !0 -
Has anyone noticed slight drops in the Domain mozRank of their sites since the OSE update?
There's been no significant changes to their link profiles, so I'm thinking how mozRank is measured may have changed. Anyone else have this issue?
Moz Pro | | RiseSEO0
