Strange Cross Domain Canonical Issue...
-
We have 2 identical ecommerce sites. Using 301 is not an option since both are major brands. We've been testing cross domain canonicals for about 2 dozen products, which were pretty successful. Our rankings generally increased.
Then things got weird. For the most part, canonicaled pages appeared to have passed link juice since the rankings significantly improved on the other site. The clean URLs (www.domain.com/product-name/sku.cfm) disappeared from the rankings, as they are supposed to, but some were replaced by urls with parameters that Google had indexed (apparently duplicate content). ex: (www.domain.com/product-name/sku.cfm?clicksource?3diaftv). The parametered URLs have the correct canonical tags.
In order to try and remove these from Google's index, we:
1. Had the pages fetched in GWT assuming that Google hadn't detected the canonical tage.
2. After we discovered a few hundred of these pages indexed on both sites, we built sitemaps of the offending pages and had the sitemaps fetched.
If anyone has any other ideas, please share.
-
I experienced a similar issue recently. Upon closer inspection I noticed there were duplicate canonical tags on the pages. Google actually ignores ALL if there are more than one. So I would certainly double check that.
-
Yes, you'll still have the tracking parameters in place for your own uses but when it comes to GWT and the crawler you'll be telling them that page_X+parameterY is the same as page_X+parameterZ. Your link juice would be more concentrated in that case as you wouldn't be creating duplicate content via parameters and would further help Google to canonicalize your page.
-
Thanks Ryan. The problem is that the URL parameters are created to track clicks from a hero image on our home page. If we block those parameters, we are wasting link juice in a big way.
-
You might want to make use of the URL Parameters section in Crawl >> URL Parameters to further help with your canonicalization. See: http://searchengineland.com/google-lets-you-tell-them-which-url-parameters-to-ignore-25925. Cheers!
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
-
Canonical tag on a large site
when would you reccomend using a canonical tag on a large site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cristiana.Solinas0 -
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH0 -
Crawl Issue for Deleted Pages
Hi, sometimes, I just delete a page and not necessarily want to make a 404 to another page. So Google Webmaster Tools shows me 108 'not found' pages under 'Crawling Errors'. Is that a problem for my site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal
Can I ignore this with good conscience?
Shall I make 404 to my homepage? I am confused and would like to hear your opinion on this. Best, Robin0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
Tips to Merge Two Domains?
Hi all, my client assigned me to merge both their two domains. To cut the long story, at the moment they have, for example, domain1.com and domain2.com. Practically, they sell quite the same products but with different content and layout. This has been happening for several years: domain1.com came first then domain2.com a couple of months after. They noticed that domain2.com has now more traffic than domain1.com. Another reason is they want to use one placeholder to avoid brand confusion (as expected because the products are actually the same). So, they are planning to merge the brand into domain2.com. I think this is just the same as moving domain, isn't it? I have been preparing all things as per SEOmoz SEO Guide: How to Properly Move Domains and Google's moving your site . Do you have any other tips to include? I want to make sure that the domain moving will be successful and the link juice on domain1.com can be transferred to domain2.com . Many thanks for your help! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ci3reR0 -
Retailers Issue
Hi there, We have 20 retailers who are about to launch websites and are going to be selling our products on their websites, however with they have no content for these products they are wanting to take our content we have for our product pages on place the content on their websites, is this going to cause an issue for me? We are ranking well for competitive keywords in this niche and do not want to do anything to harm it. What I would say is the retailers in question of no intention short term anyway of doing anything with SEO. Thanks for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Domain with a Virus History
Hi, I have a domain that I am working on that has a past we did not know about. Doing a bit of research it appears that back in 2010 the domain had a link to a virus or had a virus on the domain – because of this certain anti virus sites are blocking the domain. Interestingly Google, Norton, Firefox say the domain is fine.... IE, Kaspersky and a few still block it. I am going through and manually searching and trying to get them to agree the site is safe BUT I am having a problem with mywot.com. They refuse to take down the “reviews” staying its a virus site. Anything I can do? Any suggestions? Any legal action we can take? Is there anything else I can do or should be doing to check else where? Thanks in advance Fresh Fire One
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Raise my Domain Authority and MozRank
I have a budget of about $10,000 over the next 2 months and I would like to raise my Domain Authority from 28 to past 50. What should I do with this money? I am looking for suggestions and ideas. If anybody wants to work on this, please PM me. I also need an On Page SEO expert to make corrections and suggestions. I can PM the actual domain to anybody interested.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trickyzoo0