Canonicals: use when page has same listings, but displayed very differently?
-
Say you have a listing of movies. In that listing, there are 5 different view types. One has the scenes broken out. Another has only the box covers. Two of the views have movie descriptions, but others don't. Still, the listings themselves are the same, and you only want the default view to be indexed. Is it appropriate to use canonicals in this case?
The alternative is to noindex the other views, but the site already has rankings and deep links.
If Google does see the pages as unique and we apply a canonical, could we be penalized or would they merely ignore it?
-
Firstly you would never be penalized for using rel=canonical. If its the same content yes I recommend using the tag pointing towards the one you want indexed. It seems like a messy layout though have you looked into making it neat and maybe a bit more friendly for users, could you not have a lot of that information on one page ?
In short - Yes use canonical to avoid duplicate issues.
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
-
When serving a 410 for page gone, should I serve an error page?
I'm removing a bunch of old & rubbish pages and was going to serve 410 to tell google they're gone (my understanding is it'll get them out of the index a bit quicker than a 404). I should still serve an error page though, right? Similar to a 404. That doesn't muddy the "gone" message that I'm giving Google? There's no need to 410 and die?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HSDOnline0 -
Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical
A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google. The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way). So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible... What would be your recommendation on this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ostesmorbrod0 -
How and When Should I use Canonical Url Tags?
Pretty new to the SEO universe. But I have not used any canonical tags, just because there is not definitive source explaining exactly when and why you should use them??? Am I the only one who feels this way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenrushdaily0 -
Our client's web property recently switched over to secure pages (https) however there non secure pages (http) are still being indexed in Google. Should we request in GWMT to have the non secure pages deindexed?
Our client recently switched over to https via new SSL. They have also implemented rel canonicals for most of their internal webpages (that point to the https). However many of their non secure webpages are still being indexed by Google. We have access to their GWMT for both the secure and non secure pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
Should we just let Google figure out what to do with the non secure pages? We would like to setup 301 redirects from the old non secure pages to the new secure pages, but were not sure if this is going to happen. We thought about requesting in GWMT for Google to remove the non secure pages. However we felt this was pretty drastic. Any recommendations would be much appreciated.0 -
Better UX or more Dedicated Pages (and page views)?
Hi, I'm building a new e-commerce site and I'm conflicting about what to do in my category pages. If we take for example a computer store.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
I have a category of laptops and inside there are filters by brand (Samsung, HP, etc.). I have two options - either having the brand choice open a new dedicated page -
i.e. Samsung-Laptops.aspx or simply do a JQuery filter which gives a better and faster user experience (immediate, animated and with no refresh). **Which should I use? (or does it depend on the keyword it might target)? **
Samsung laptops / dell laptops / hp laptops - are a great keyword on there own! By the way, splitting Laptops.aspx to many sub category physical pages might also help by providing the site with many actual pages dealing with laptops altogether.0 -
Using Images Instead of Text to Control Keywords on Page
We have recently updated a key page on our website. It is a template page that is used many times to display search results. The words "price", "revenue", and "cash flow", "not disclosed" are used for each listing on the page -- to minimize their impact on keyword density on the page we used images for these words. Here you can see some examples: http://www.businessbroker.net/State/Florida-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx http://www.businessbroker.net/City/Los Angeles-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx http://www.businessbroker.net/Industry/Auto_Car_Wash-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx You will note these words on this page are images and not regular text. We are certainly not doing this to "dupe" the visitors or Google -- we just want to ensure that each page has keywords pertinent to what the page is about. Bottom line question -- is this an OK practice? Are we running any risk with Google by doing this? I'm particularly nervous these days with all of the Google changes. Your thoughts and guidance on this issue would be much appreciated. Thanks. MWM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720 -
How are pages ranked when using Google's "site:" operator?
Hi, If you perform a Google search like site:seomoz.org, how are the pages displayed sorted/ranked? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0 -
Different pages ranking for search terms, often irrelevant.
Website: www.templatemonster.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | templatemonster
Problem: Positions dropped while pages which were ranking previously disappeared from top 100 and now different - often completely irrelevant - pages are ranking. Examples:
Search term: Joomla Templates
Previous Position: 8
Current Position: 35
Previously Ranked Page: http://www.templatemonster.com/joomla-templates.php
Currently Ranked Page: http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php Similar situation with the following search terms: virtuemart templates, virtuemart themes, prestashop templates, prestashop themes, magento themes, zencart templates, zencart themes, zen cart templates, zen cart themes When: according to the Google Analytics (drop in visitors stats) this happened on July, 2nd Preconditions: we had 45 minutes downtime on July 2-nd - but could this 45 mins have had such disastrous results?
No redirects or canonical URL were used which could lead to such change of ranking page.
No changes in the site's informational structure and design.
In webmaster tools (inbound links report) we saw a website yesterday which had over 800,000 links pointing to our domain - http://moviebestwatch.com/ - and today this site is NOT found in Webmaster Tools report! Also, site is down, domain is quite new (how could it have possibly developed 800,000 pages in such a short time?) and whois is privacy protected. Is this some dirty trick from competitors - could it have possibly influenced our positions? Still, what I completely fail to understand - how could a page like http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php be the top ranking page for 'Joomla templates' if there is: not a single mention of the word 'Joomla' on the page (or source code), i.e. the page is completely irrelevant to the search term not a single link with 'Joomla templates' anchor text pointing to that page, neither external nor internal PS. No similar changes in other search engines noticed. Also, the pages in question have been re-spidered July 4th and cache shows the right pages, i.e. it is not that Googlebot has seen logotypes page instead of Joomla templates page. I checked any possible reason I could think of (see "Preconditions") but still have no clue - what is going on?1