Should we NOINDEX NOFOLLOW canonical pages?
-
Hi,
I was window shopping at Gemvara and noticed something interesting...
They rank very high for long-tail phrases such as "rose gold engagement rings" and in their pagination pages for that category not only they filled canonical to the main category page (which is logic) but also they "NOINDEX NOFOLLOW" the pages...
Is that recommended?
Thanks
-
100% agree with Alan here as the purpose of rel=canonical implementation is to hint Google about the non-preferred pages (the duplicate or near duplicate pages of their original versions or the preferred ones) and not to index them.
Best,
Devanur Rafi
-
Depends on how unique the pages are.
if the pages using params are quite unique then I would just leave them be, if they are no very unique then using the canonicals the best bet.
-
Dear Alan,
May I ask then what would you do with a shopping cart page?
It usually receives params in the URL so I generally add rel=canonical to the page without the params (which still holds some basic information like random testimonial, guarantee etc.).
Another option is to place everything in cookies (and therefore not using params and no need for canonical). But this is bit more complex and cookie dependent.
Thanks
-
Devanur is correct, the canonical will never be seen if you no index.
Also you should use noindex,follow not nofollow, using no follow means all link juice pointing to those pages will be lost, using follow means the link juice can flow back out of the pages
-
Hi, when you have the rel=canonical implementation in place, you don't need to bother about noindex or nofollow for those pages as they will not be indexed. When you have noindex with nofollow in place, you don't need the rel=canonical implemented as it does not make any sense. Hope that helps my friend.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
Canonicals for Splitting up large pagination pages
Hi there, Our dev team are looking at speeding up load times and making pages easier to browse by splitting up our pagination pages to 10 items per page rather than 1000s (exact number to be determined) - sounds like a great idea, but we're little concerned about the canonicals on this one. at the moment we rel canonical (self) and prev and next. so b is rel b, prev a and next c - for each letter continued. Now the url structure will be a1, a(n+), b1, b(n+), c1, c(n+). Should we keep the canonicals to loop through the whole new structure or should we loop each letter within itself? Either b1 rel b1, prev a(n+), next b2 - even though they're not strictly continuing the sequence. Or a1 rel a1, next a2. a2 rel a2, prev a1, next a3 | b1 rel b1, next b2, b2 rel b2, prev b1, next b3 etc. Would love to hear your points of view, hope that all made sense 🙂 I'm leaning towards the first one even though it's not continuing the letter sequence, but because it's looping the alphabetically which is currently working for us already. This is an example of the page we're hoping to split up: https://www.world-airport-codes.com/alphabetical/airport-name/b.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra0 -
Canonicals question ref canonicals pointing to redundant urls
Hi, SCENARIO: A site has say 3 examples of the same product page but with different urls because that product fits into 3 different categories e.g. /tools/hammer /handtools/hammer /specialoffers/hammer and lets say the first 2 of those have the canonical pointing to /specialoffers/hammer YET that page is now redundant e.g. the webmaster decided to do away with the /specialoffers/ folder. ASSUMPTIONS: That is going to seriously hamper the chances of the 2 remaining versions of the hammer page being able to rank as they have canonicals pointing to a url that no longer exists. The canonical tags should be changed to point to 1 of the remaining url versions. As an added complication - lets say /specialoffers/hammer still exists, the url works, but just isn't navigable from the site. Thoughts/feedback welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
What is better? No canonical or two canonicals to different pages?
I have a blogger site that is adding parameters and causing duplicate content. For example: www.mysite.com/?spref=bl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TMI.com
www.mysite.com/?commentPage=1 www.mysite.com/?m=1 www.mysite.com/?m=0 I decided to implement a canonical tag on these pages pointing to the correct version of the page. However, for the parameter ?m=0, the canonical keeps pointing to itself. Ex: www.mysite.com/?m=0 The canonical = www.mysite.com/?m=0 So now I have two canonicals for the same page. My question is if I should leave it, and let Google decide, or completely remove the canonicals from all pages?0 -
Is it OK to Delete a Page and Move Content to a Another Page without 301 re-direct
I have a page "A" that I want to completely delete and move the written content from A" to page "B". Since I am deleting "A" (not keeping page) is it OK to upload the content from "A" to page "B" and search engines will give "B" credit for the unique content? Or, since the content has already once been indexed on "A", "B" may struggle to get full credit for this new unique content, even though page "A" is deleted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?
Hello here, here are my questions for you related to the canonical tag: 1. If I put online a new webpage with a canonical tag pointing to a different page, will this new page be indexed by Google and will I be able to find it in the index? 2. If instead I apply the canonical tag to a page already in the index, will this page be removed from the index? Thank you in advance for any insights! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
On Page vs Off Page - Which Has a Greater Effect on Rankings?
Hi Mozzers, My site will be migrating to a new domain soon, and I am not sure how to spend my time. Should I be optimizing our content for keywords, improving internal linking, and writing new content - or should I be doing link building for our current domain (or the new one)? Is there a certain ratio that determines rankings which can help me prioritize these to-dos?, such as 70:30 in favor of link-building? Thanks for any help you can offer!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Get Duplicate Page content for same page with different extension ?
I have added a campaign like "Bannerbuzz" in SEOMOZ Pro account and before 2 or 3 days i got errors related to duplicate page content . they are showing me same page with different extension. As i mentioned below http://www.bannerbuzz.com/outdoor-vinyl-banners.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
&
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/outdoor_vinyl_banner.php We checked our whole source files but we didn't define php related urls in our source code. we want to catch only our .html related urls. so, Can you please guide us to solve this issue ? Thanks <colgroup><col width="857"></colgroup>
| http://www.bannerbuzz.com/outdoor-vinyl-banners.html |0 -
Our site is recieving traffic for both .com/page and .com/page/ with the trailing slash.
Our site is recieving traffic for both .com/page and .com/page/ with the trailing slash. Should we rewrite to just the trailing slash or without because of duplicates. The other question is, if we do a rewrite, google has indexed some pages with the slash and some without - i am assuming we will lose rank for one of them once we do the rewrite, correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Profero0