Can Googlebots read canonical tags on pages with javascript redirects?
-
Hi Moz!
We have old locations pages that we can't redirect to the new ones because they have AJAX. To preserve pagerank, we are putting canonical tags on the old location pages.
Will Googlebots still read these canonical tags if the pages have a javascript redirect?
Thanks for reading!
-
I think that it's generally understood that bots read page code, they don't "do" page code like the browser does, so the canonical is read, regardless of the other code on the page.
This wouldn't be the case for 301's that trigger server side, the bot would then never reach the page to read the canonical.
HTH
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
-
Pages that 301 redirect to a 404
We are going through a website redesign that involves changing URL's for the pages on our site. Currently all our pages are in the format domain.com/example.html and we are moving to stip off the .html file extension so it would just be domain.com/example We have thousands of pages as the site deals with news so building a redirect for each individual page isn't really feasible. My plan is to have a generic rewrite rule that redirects any page that ends .html to the stripped off version of this. A problem I can see with this is that it will also redirect pages that don't exist. So for example, domain.com/non-existant-page.html would 301 to domain.com/non-existant-page which would then return a 404 status. What would the SEO repercussions be for this? Obviously if a page doesn't exist already then it shouldn't show up in the search engine indexes and shouldn't be a problem but I'm a bit worried about how old pages that currently legitimately 404 will be treated when they start to 301 redirect to a 404 instead. Not sure if there any other potential issues from this that I've missed either? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbb0240 -
Lowercase VS. Uppercase Canonical tags?
Hi MOZ, I was hoping that someone could help shed some light on an issue I'm having with URL structure and the canonical tag. The company I work for is a distributor of electrical products and our E-commerce site is structured so that our URL's (specifically, our product detail page URL's) include a portion (the part #) that is all uppercase (e.g: buy/OEL-Worldwide-Industries/AFW-PG-10-10). The issue is that we have just recently included a canonical tag in all of our product detail pages and the programmer that worked on this project has every canonical tag in lowercase instead of uppercase. Now, in GWT, I'm seeing over 20,000-25,000 "duplicate title tags" or "duplicate descriptions". Is this an issue? Could this issue be resolved by simply changing the canonical tag to reflect the uppercase URL's? I'm not too well versed in canonical tags and would love a little insight. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GalcoIndustrial0 -
Alternative HTML Structure for indexation of JavaScript Single Page Content
Hi there, we are currently setting up a pure html version for Bots on our site amazine.com so the content as well as navigation will be fully indexed by google. We will show google exactly the same content the user sees (except for the fancy JS effects). So all bots get pure html and real users see the JS based version. My questions are first, if everyone agrees that this is the way to go or if there are alternatives to this to get the content indexed. Are there best practices? All JS-based websites must have this problem, so I am hoping someone can share their experience. The second question regards the optimal number of content pieces ('Stories') displayed per page and the best method to paginate. Should we display e.g. 10 stories and use ?offset in the URL or display 100 stories to google per page and maybe use rel=”next”/"pref" instead. Generally, I would really appreciate any pointers and experiences from you guys as we haven't done this sort of thing before! Cheers, Frank
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FranktheTank-474970 -
Can I put a video transcript into a title tag?
I use wistia.com to embed videos onto my company website. Because of the way I have my page setup, I have to embed my video using the iframe embed option. Since I'm using this option, my video transcript isn't going to be SEO friendly. Can I manually insert a title tag within the video iFrame code with the entire transcript? Would that be a good workaround so that I can have the transcript help my page optimization? Thanks! Andrea
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
Redirect or Rewrite? 2 pages ranking
We have two pages ranking for "Custom Web Design" http://www.imageworksstudio.com/custom-web-design ranks higher (consistently 9-13) and http://www.imageworksstudio.com/content/custom-web-design ranks around 35-40 the latter is actually an older version of the article that never was replaced or taken down - but it has the majority of the links to it Wondering if we should update the old content so it is not similar to the one that is ranking better or if we should redirect everything to /custom-web-design to see if it can secure better rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imageworks-2612900 -
Embed Same Video On Multiple Pages or 301 Redirect Into 1?
I have 3 pages that rank VERY well for related terms such as: -How to get widgets -How to become a widget -Getting widgets -etc. I am incorporating a video on the topic and rewriting much of the content on the site. I am wondering if it is wise to 301 redirect all 3 pages to 1 page that has the new/better video content or if I should leave the old content that is ranking well and embed the video on the top of each. The anal retentive side of me wants a nice new site structure and 1 powerful page. However, if the 3 pages are currently ranking (sometimes 2 pages in the same top 10 results), should I mess with what is working? Ultimately my goal is to increase the avg time on site as these 3 pages are top traffic pages for the site. However, they do not convert at all, as they are for a product we don't offer. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
What is the best canonical url to use for a product page?
I just helped a client redesign and launch a new website for their organic skin care company (www.hylunia.com). The site is built in Magento which by default creates MANY urls for each product. Which of these two do you think would be the best to use as the canonical version? http://www.hylunia.com/pure-hyaluronic-acid-solution
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielmoss
or http://www.hylunia.com/products/face-care/facial-moisturizers/pure-hyaluronic-acid-solution ? I'm leaning on the latter, because it makes sense to me to have the breadcrumbs match the url string, and also it seems having more keywords in the url would help. However, it's obviously a very long url, and there might be some benefits to using the shorter version that I'm not aware of. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts. Best, Daniel0 -
Rel Alternate tag and canonical tag implementation question
Hello, I have a question about the correct way to implement the canoncial and alternate tags for a site supporting multiple languages and markets. Here's our setup. We have 3 sites, each serving a specific region, and each available in 3 languages. www.example.com : serves the US, default language is English www.example.ca : serves Canada, default language is English www.example.com.mx : serves Mexico, default language is Spanish In addition, each sites can be viewed in English, French or Spanish, by adding a language specific sub-directory prefix ( /fr , /en, /es). The implementation of the alternate tag is fairly straightforward. For the homepage, on www.example.com, it would be: -MX” href=“http://www.example.com.mx/index.html” /> -MX” href=”http://www.example.com.mx/fr/index.html“ />
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Amiee
-MX” href=”http://www.example.com.mx/en/index.html“ />
-US” href=”http://www.example.com/fr/index.html” />
-US” href=”http://www.example.com/es/index.html“ />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/fr/index.html” />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/index.html” />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/es/index.html” /> My question is about the implementation of the canonical tag. Currently, each domain has its own canonical tag, as follows: rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/index.html"> <link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.ca="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:>
<link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.com.mx="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:> I am now wondering is I should set the canonical tag for all my domains to: <link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.com="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:> This is what seems to be suggested on this example from the Google help center. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 What do you think?0