Rel="canonical" tag is implemented in my product pages, but still getting canoncal error for products in Moz. What is the problem? me or MOZ?

[Shayann]

I have included the rel="canonical" tag in all my product pages, but still getting canonical error in MOZ reports for more than 6 month ! I would like to know if my code is wrong or the MOZ report system is not working properly.

Here is an example of my canonical code in line 84

rel="canonical" href="http://www.doornmore.com/slab-single-door-80-fiberglass-courtlandt-1-panel-arch-lite-glass.html" />

Thanks

Shayann

[Shayann]

Peter,

Thank you for responding to my question. I actually noticed that the pages that Moz is considering as duplicate content, is not a duplicate. However they are very similiar with slietly difference. I do not how to tell the crawlers not to index as a duplication.

Thank you

[Peterli]

Hi there Shayann,

Thanks for writing in! I would take a look at where these pages' canonicals are pointing. if their canonical tags point to different URLs, then they can be consider duplicates. For example, DUPLICATE1 is considered a duplicate of DUPLICATE2 because the canonical tag for the first page is CANON1 while the canonical for the second URL is CANON2.

Since the canonical tags point to different pages it is assumed that CANON1 and CANON2 are likely to be duplicates themselves.

Here is how our system interprets duplicate content vs. rel canonical:

Assuming A, B, C, and D are all duplicates,

If A references B as the canonical, then they are not considered duplicates
If A and B both reference C as canonical, A and B are not considered duplicates of each other
If A references C as a canonical, A and B are considered duplicated
If A references C as canonical, B references D, then A and B are considered duplicates
The examples you've provided actually fall into the fourth example I've listed above.

For more information on using canonical tags, check out this great post by our very own Dr. Pete:
http://www.moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions

I hope this clears things up. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Best,

Peter
Moz Help Team

[mihaiaperghis]

Shayann, you should check which are the 2 Other URLs that create this issue, to check if they implement different rel=canonical tags.

[Shayann]

Hi,

Please find the attached error.

Thanks

XjYlvhd

[mihaiaperghis]

Hey Shayann,

What errors related to rel=canonical do you get in your Moz report?

Inside the Crawl Diagnostics Summary, the rel=canonical tag is listed inside the Notices block. That means it's just a count of how many pages have this tag implemented, and doesn't imply there are any errors with it, but simply that the tag is present on your pages.

Hope this helps!