A 301 redirect to a page with a rel canonical to a page with a 301 question...
-
MOZ registers thousands of DC and Duplicate titles on a Drupal site which has a little strange setup.
Example:
www.1234.com/en-us 301 redirects to www.realsite.com/en-us which has a rel canonical to www.1234.com which 301 redirects to www.realsite.com.
If you're still with me I thank you.
My question is since MOZ registers errors, if indeed the rel canonical isn't recognized due to a 301 redirect? -
I agree it's a strange setup and also suspected it would be ignored. I appreciate the answers and will see if there is a way to hardcode a way out of it.
-
It's really difficult to tell what Google will do in these situations, and it's generally a bad idea to chain redirects and caonicals, but I suspect the canonicals will be ignored. The bigger problem here is that the 301 is basically saying that "realsite.com" is canonical, but then the canonical is saying that "1234.com" is canonical. Even as a human, the logic doesn't make any sense, unless I'm missing something. You may see unpredictable results (and unpredictable is usually bad).
-
Hi Phillip,
Check out this great reference by Dr Pete: http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
In a nutshell (if I can get my head around it) rel canonical is 'suggesting' to google which version of a page should be indexed for search purposes while 301 redirects are basically taking you to the canonical version of the page already and therefore is more final in regards both users and bots.
The set up you have (assuming that you want to consolidate 1234.com to realsite.com permanently) has a problem in that you are telling google that realsite.com/en-us has a canonical of 1234.com (which is just a suggestion, not a permanent redirect) and therefore yes the canonical as you say is not being reognised in the way you expect it to be because it is indeed just a suggestion, not a followed link if you see what I mean. I think 301 redirecting the realsite/en-us to realsite.com is the only thing that will be a permanent solution.
Hope I got that right, maybe someone else can chime in....
-
Hi Lynn thank you for your response.
Yes a horrible setup but has something to do with Drupal URL architecture.
In Moz it show's www.realsite.com/en-us and www.realsite.com as the culprits so it seems to ignore the rel cannonical from www.realsite.com/en-us to www.1234.comI might ask the Moz team if Googlebot treats this the same way.
Again thank you for your answer.
-
That is just nasty! Which domain is showing the duplicates? I assume the realsite.com and it is showing duplicates between the / and the /en-us versions? I cannot say if moz is registering the errors in the same way exactly as a search bot would register them, but you are asking for trouble with it.
Can you not simplify the chain? It seems to me that the cross domain canonical is pointless in this case. You have all 1234.com urls 301 to their realsite.com equivalents. OK. If needed canonical the realsite.com/en-us to realsite.com or probably better yet 301 redirect it also. It might need a bit of technical fiddling to get it all set up, but surely there must be a way!
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 to set up Rel=canonical in Joomla based sites
I've built a few sites using joomla (please don't tell me I should be using wordpress!!) and wondered how I can add the rel-canonical to these pages. I'm assuming it would come as a plugin or module but can't seem to find anything that works right for me. Anyone any ideas? Thanks in advance, Gordon
Moz Pro | | Gordon_Hall0 -
On Link Analysis tab I my best pages are 301 and 404 pages.
I looked on my redirrect file and found that /* redirects to /v/404.asp.
Moz Pro | | sbetzen
However if you look below at the link analysis the 404 page is getting a 404 error.
The homepage ecowindchimes.com/ is getting a 301 (but I don't know where it is going to).
The third one is also redirected. 1. [No Data] ecowindchimes.com/ ||| 301 ||| 2 ||| 36 2. 2. [No Data] ecowindchimes.com/v/404.asp ||| 404 ||| 2 ||| 34 3. [No Data] 3. ecowindchimes.com/index.html?lang=en-us&target=d2.html ||| 301 ||| 1 ||| 33 So I have 2 questions: 1) should this be fixed? and 2) how? This is a volusion site and I believe the "catchall" redirect was done by them0 -
Seomoz duplicate rel="next" pages
Hello my page has this Although with seomoz crawl it says that this pages has duplicate titles. If my blog has 25 pages, i have according seomoz 25 duplicate titles. Can someone tell me if this is correct or if the seomoz crawl cannot recognize rel="next" or if there is another better way to tell google when there a pages generated from the blog that as the same title Should i ignore these seomoz errors thank you,
Moz Pro | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Does the Crawl Diagnosis - Duplicate Page Content account for a canonical meta tags?
I see the same page listed 3 time (with different query params). But on each I have a meta tag pointing to the correct canonical url. By still seeing all three listed, does that mean there is an error with my meta tag?
Moz Pro | | Simantel0 -
Only one page has been crawled
I am running a campaing for three weeks now and first two crawls was ok but the last one is showing only one page crawled. the subdomain I am tracking is: www.cubaenmiami.com I have everything correct in my site. Regards Alex
Moz Pro | | esencia0 -
Why would the SEOMoz Page analysis pick up exact keywords used in page title and text?
Hi, I am trying to optimise this URL : www.adaptiveconsultancy.com/ecommerce/features/advanced-ecommerce with the keyword being 'advanced ecommerce' With the 'On-Page Report Card' from SEOMoz that the exact keyword isn't featured in the page title or text, but it is in there. Why would this not be picked up? Thank you in advance,
Moz Pro | | adaptiveconsultancy
M0 -
Why are these pages considered duplicate page content?
A recent crawl diagnostic for a client's website had several new duplicate page content errors. The problem is, I'm not sure where the error comes from since the content in the webpage is different from one another. Here's the pages that SEOMOZ reported to have duplicate page content errors: http://www.imaginet.com.ph/wireless-internet-service-providers-term http://www.imaginet.com.ph/antivirus-term http://www.imaginet.com.ph/berkeley-internet-name-domain http://www.imaginet.com.ph/customer-premises-equipment-term The only thing similar that I see is the headline which says "Glossary Terms Used in this Site" - I hope that the one sentence is the reason for the error. Any input is appreciated as I want to find out the best solution for my client's website errors. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | TheNorthernOffice790 -
Rel-canonical tag confusion
I had our web development company implement the rel-canonical tag on all pages of our website to get rid of the duplicate content months ago. However, when I use the On Page optimizer tool (in previous version) it would tell me I'm not using the rel-canonical tag correctly on the page I was grading and when I untagged use rel-canonical tag in our CMS (which was pointing to the correct page) my grade would go to an A. Now with the new version it says I'm using it wrong either way, when I have the tag used in my CMS and everything else is good I have a B, but one I click to not use Rel-canonical tag I have a C. Both ways it shows up in On-page tool without a check in Apprpriate Use of Rel Canonical. I've attached pictures. In C version it says - Canonical URL "/info/solutions/" and "/info/solutions/" In B version: Canonical URL "/info/solutions/" What am I doing wrong and how do i fix this? Because ALL of my grades have dropped to Bs and Cs. Thanks! iklEHOjJLZE4966 [URL]]([URL=http://imgur.com/5BYcV][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/5BYcV.jpg[/IMG][/URL]) 5BYcV
Moz Pro | | aircyclemegan0