Canonical URLs in an eCommerce site
-
We have a website with 4 product categories (1. ice cream parlors, 2. frozen yogurt shops etc.).
A few sub-categories (e.g. toppings, smoothies etc.) and the products contained in those are available in more than one product category (e.g. the smoothies are available in the "ice cream parlors" category, but also in the "frozen yogurt shops" category).
My question:
Unfortunately the website has been designed in a way that if a subcategory (e.g. smoothies) is available in more than 1 category, then itself (the subcategory page) + all its product pages will be automatically visible under various different urls.
So now I have several urls for one and the same product:
www.example.com/strawberry-smoothie|SMOOTHIES|FROZEN-YOGURT-SHOPS-391-2-5
and
http://www.example.com/strawberry-smoothie|SMOOTHIES|ICE-CREAM-PARLORS-391-1-5
And also several ones for one and the same sub-category (they all include exactly the same set of products):
http://www.example.com/SMOOTHIES-1-12-0-4 (the smoothies contained in the ice cream parlors category)
http://www.example.com/SMOOTHIES-2-12-0-4 (the same smoothies, contained in the frozen yogurt shops category)
This is happening with around 100 pages.
I would add canonical tags to the duplicates, but I'm afraid that by doing so, the category (frozen yogurt shops) that contains several non-canonical sub-categories (smoothies, toppings etc.) , might not show up anymore in search results or become irrelevant for Google when searching for example for "products for frozen yoghurt shops". Do you know if this would be actually the case?
I hope I explained it well..
-
Thanks a lot Anthony. Unfortunately the problem cannot be fixed at programming level so I'll try the "solution" with the canonical tags.
Cheers!
-
You are on the right path and realize you have a problem.
My #1 suggestion would be to fix this at a programming/development level to prevent this from happening. Canonical tags can be used to help/fix the problem, but they are more of a suggestion to the search engines as opposed to a 100% perfect fix.
If you can't eliminate the problem, have no fear using the canonical tags. Each category, subcategory and product should have their own canonical URL and the duplicates can canonicalize back to them.
-
Why don't you try to measure the impact one maybe 4 or 5 of the pages?
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
-
Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical
Hi all, A number of our pages have dropped out of search rankings. It seems they are being marked as "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical" However, the page Google is choosing as the canonical is totally different - different headings, titles, metadata, content on the page. We are completely mystified as to why this is happening. If anyone can shed any light, it would be hugely appreciated! Example URL is this one:
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/london Which Google seems to think is a duplicate of this: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/solicitor/london0 -
Cross domain canonical for different branded sites
Hi everyone, We are working on 5 websites that offer the same products but are of different brands and locations. They are owned by the same company, but each run independently. On the sites, they have content such as privacy policies, terms and conditions and guides that are the same across all brands. Will publishing these be flagged as duplicate content by Google? If yes, is it recommended to add rel=canonical to all duplicate pages across all sites pointing to one of the five? We are just concerned that the 4 sites with duplicate content would be valued less than the canonical as a result of passed link equity. We are doing SEO optimisations for all and are trying to rank them well in SERPs. If a canonical is not the best solution here, what would be the best to do apart from completely rewriting content? Is it noindex tag or turning the texts into images and adding to PDFs? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | nhhernandez1 -
New Site maintaining rank on old URL's
Hi I have a new website going live which has a different page names etc i.e. the old site had pages that are ranking called aboutus.html and the new site is called about.php What is the best approach to maintain the rank and also on orphaned pages Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Canonical Question
Can someone please help me with a question, I am learning about Canonical URls at the moment and have had some errors come up, it is saying ```![Priority 1](http://try.powermapper.com/Reports/89db420a-2cf2-46dc-bae4-543efbefc241/report/Report/p1.png)This page has multiple rel=canonical tags.Line 9 Best Practice[![](http://try.powermapper.com/Reports/89db420a-2cf2-46dc-bae4-543efbefc241/report/Report/dropbox.png)](http://try.powermapper.com/Reports/89db420a-2cf2-46dc-bae4-543efbefc241/report/res/2.view.htm#)![Help](http://try.powermapper.com/Reports/89db420a-2cf2-46dc-bae4-543efbefc241/report/Report/help.png)Search engine behavior is unpredictable when a page has multiple canonical tags. <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.finalduties.co.uk/" /><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Final Duties – Low cost probate RSS Feed" href="http://www.finalduties.co.uk/feed/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Final Duties – Low cost probate Atom Feed" href="http://www.finalduties.co.uk/feed/atom/" /><link rel="pingback" href="http://www.finalduties.co.uk/xmlrpc.php" />That canonical link to Feed? should that be there, I know the Plugin has done this but I am lost to what should be there, I have no duplicate pages as far as I am aware than needs a canonical URL ??Thanks ``` >
Technical SEO | | Chris__Chris0 -
One site per location or all under and umbrella site?
I am working on a project where we are re-branding lots (100+) existing local business under one national brand. I am wondering what we should do with their existing websites, they are generally fairly poor and will need re-designing to match the new brand but may have some residual links? 301 redirect the URL to the national site, e.g. nationalsite.com/localbusinessA? If so what should I look out for? Do I need to specifically redirect any pages that have links to them to the same pages on the new site? Or should I give them a new standalone website that they link back to the national brand site? More than likely this will be hosted on the same server and CMS as the main site just the URL will remain Do I need to make sure that any old URL's that had links to them are 301'd to the new pages? Many thanks for you advice.
Technical SEO | | BadgerToo0 -
.CA site same as .com site - are both necessary?
Dear Friend, We representa a major national brand in the auto care industry, and they have locations in both US and Canada. There is a primary content site at .com that we have duplicated at .ca. We are hosting the .ca site on a separate IP on a server in Canada - but by in large it is the same site. (there are some minor changes we made to change US English to Canadian English - though minor. When we search Google.ca we generally see strong search results for the .com site, but rarely, if ever any evidence of rankings for the .ca site. The .com site was launched several years ago about 18 months before the .ca site. Why doesn't Google.ca show the .ca site? Is this an issue of duplicate content, and Google.ca simply shows the .com version which it knew about first? Are we wasting our time, money and efforts having both? Thanks, Tim ps. this isn't about location. We use a separate site to locate local shops, and have coordinated that well with Google Places, and when looking for local auto care - we do well in both US and Canada. The sites described above are largetl content sites.
Technical SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
Ecommerce site with currency selectors giving dupe content?
Hi everyone,
Technical SEO | | BeachDude
One of my ecommerce sites uses BigCommerce. They have a feature where you can add different currency buttons to change the currency that the customer can shop as. This is great because if people from the UK visit our site, they can change the currency to their own rather than US. It just ads a variable on the end of the URL string to change the currency. However, in my webmaster tools I noticed that I think i am getting a bunch of duplicate content. For example, it thinks i have duplicate title tags for the following: domainname/pages/my-cool-widget.html
domainname/pages/my-cool-widget.html?setCurrencyId=1
.domainname/pages/my-cool-widget.html?setCurrencyId=2
domainname/pages/my-cool-widget.html?setCurrencyId=3
domainname/pages/my-cool-widget.html?setCurrencyId=4 I thought about adding "rel=no-follow" but unfortunately I don't have access to this file to edit the code. Any suggestions?0