Canonical tag used on several pages?
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Is it a bad idea to use rel=canonical from several pages back to one (if you are planning on no-indexing them)? Does this concentrate the “link juice” from those several pages back to one?
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Yes
From the Matt Cutts / Eric Enge Interview
Eric Enge: Can a NoIndex page accumulate PageRank?
Matt Cutts: A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page.
Eric Enge: So, it can accumulate and pass PageRank.
Matt Cutts: Right, and it will still accumulate PageRank, but it won't be showing in our Index. So, I wouldn't make a NoIndex page that itself is a dead end. You can make a NoIndex page that has links to lots of other pages.
For example you might want to have a master Sitemap page and for whatever reason NoIndex that, but then have links to all your sub Sitemaps.
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Thank you for the quick reply. The noindex, follow, also passes link juice as well though, correct? To the pages it links to?
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To clarify, canonical tags are designed for identifying the original version of a page. If you have a product page then it could be sorted in ascending or descending order based on price, size, color and numerous other fields. You could also vary the style of a page, offer a "print" version, etc.
All of these pages provide the exact same content but are formatted differently to provide a better user experience. That is the design of the canonical tag. You are telling a search engine "hey, don't get confused, the original version of the page that should be indexed is [canonical]."
The noindex tag tells a search engine "there is no content on this page which would be of value to include in SERPs".
The consequence of not using a canonical tag or noindex tag properly, is that pages can appear in SERPs that should not. You may do a search for "widgets" and instead of your main page appearing your "out of stock" or other page may appear.
For link juice, if you use the canonical tag any link juice will flow to the canonical page minus a tiny amount which is lost any time any form of redirect is used.
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Regarding "link juice" between canonical and no-index--if all 100 pages are canonicalized to 1 url, that url will received "link juice" from all 100 pages, correct? And, if the noindex, follow tag is used, then the "link juice" will be distributed to all urls on each of the individual pages?
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You are perfectly welcome to use the canonical tag on multiple pages.
If you use the canonical tag, I do not see any point in also adding noindex to these pages.
I will share that Lindsay made a blog entry on this specific topic. She hasn't been around lately but I would love to have clarification as she seems to recommend using noindex instead of the canonical tag. Please reference the following Q&A for more details: http://www.seomoz.org/q/canonical-noindex-use-together
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