What canonical makes sense in this particular situation?
-
Hi Mozzers,
I am running into a situation where I am not sure what would be the canonical best practice.
I am working on an e-commerce site (magento)
Situation 1 :
site.com/category/subcategory/subcategory2/subcategory3/ is canonicalized to site.com/category/subcategory/subcategory2/
Situation 2:
if site.com/category/subcategory/subcategory2/ is canonicalized to site.com/category/subcategory/ wouldn't it make sense to have site.com/category/subcategory/subcategory2/subcategory3/ (situation1) canonicalized to site.com/category/subcategory/ instead of site.com/category/subcategory/subcategory2/ ? and if I am right would it hurt to have both situations 1 and 2 combined?
Thanks Guys!
-
Thank you Guys!
-
If you have more than on canonical on a page, Google will ignore them all. Pick the page that will be the canonical and add the same tag to the subsequent pages with duplicate content.
www.site.com = canonical
the canonical tag on all subsequent pages will be link link rel='canonical' href='www.site.com'
-
Hi,
You should avoid URL canonicalization chains just like you avoid redirect chains. If URL1, URL2, URL3 contain substantially similar or identical content and if you choose URL1 to be the canonical/preferred one then here is what you should ideally be doing:
URL 2 --> Canonicalized to URL1
URL 3 --> Canonicalized to URL1 and not to URL2
In this case, only URL1 will be in Google's index. Here you go for more:
http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
Check out point 9.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
-
Anything make sense if it make sense.
The only rule is what make sense from a duplicate content perspective. And you are not limited to rules based on category tree sub levels.
Just think about the content of each category (or family/group of categories) and what make sense to have in google index. What should go in google index is the target of the canonicalization, what doesn't matter to have in the index (because duplicate, because of ridiculous potential traffic, etc...) should have the meta canonical tag pointing to the canonical url. That's all.
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
-
Product Variations (rel=canonical or 301) & Duplicate Product Descriptions
Hi All, Hoping for a bit of advice here please, I’ve been tasked with building an e-commerce store and all is going well so far. We decided to use Wordpress with Woocommerce as our shop plugin. I’ve been testing the CSV import option for uploading all our products and I’m a little concerned on two fronts: - Product Variations Duplicate content within the product descriptions **Product Variations: - ** We are selling furniture that has multiple variations (see list below) and as a result it creates c.50 product variations all with their own URL’s. Facing = Left, Right Leg style = Round, Straight, Queen Ann Leg colour = Black, White, Brown, Wood Matching cushion = Yes, No So my question is should I 301 re-direct the variation URL’s to the main product URL as from a user perspective they aren't used (we don't have images for each variation that would trigger the URL change, simply drop down options for the user to select the variation options) or should I add the rel canonical tag to each variation pointing back to the main product URL. **Duplicate Content: - ** We will be selling similar products e.g. A chair which comes in different fabrics and finishes, but is basically the same product. Most, if not all of the ‘long’ product descriptions are identical with only the ‘short’ product descriptions being unique. The ‘long’ product descriptions contain all the manufacturing information, leg option/colour information, graphics, dimensions, weight etc etc. I’m concerned that by having 300+ products all with identical ‘long’ descriptions its going to be seen negatively by google and effect the sites SEO. My question is will this be viewed as duplicate content? If so, are there any best practices I should be following for handling this, other than writing completely unique descriptions for each product, which would be extremely difficult given its basically the same products re-hashed. Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | Jon-S0 -
Target: blank. Does it make an SEO difference?
I've notice many sites MOZ included no longer use the target: blank attribute. I think that's what it's called. Basically when a link on your site opens a new tab in the browser as opposed to replacing the browser window you are in. Given that MOZ think of everything, I would love to hear opinions on this.
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Canonical and Alternate REL
Hi I have a website which is mostly dynamic content from a database. In the header of the site I have a function which outputs the rel="canonical" link and in some cases the canonical is the page the user is visiting and not another page on the site but I still show it in the source. However we have just recently launched our mobile website which is stored on an M DOT domain (i.e. m.mydomain.com) which has different URL's to my main website so following Google's recommendations we have created rel="alternate" links on my desktop site to point to the equivalent mobile pages and on the mobile pages I have created rel="canonical" links which point back to the relevant desktop site keeping everything tidy.
Technical SEO | | yousayjump
My question is, is there an issue with having both a rel="canonical" and rel="alternate" in the source of of a single page on my desktop site? Is it conflicting or detrimental in anyway? Thanks for reading0 -
Canonical tag or 301
Hi, Our crawl report is showing duplicate content. some of the report I am clear about what to do but on others I am not. Some of the duplicate content arises with a 'theme=default' on the end of the URL. Is this version of a page necessary for people to see when they visit the site (like a theme=print page is) in which case I think we should use a canonical tag, or is it not necessary in which case we should use a 301? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
Are duplicate page titles fixed by the canonical tag
Google Web Master Tools is saying that some of my pages have duplicate page titles because of pagination. However, I have implemented the canonical tag on the paginated pages which I thought would keep my site from being penalized for duplicate page titles. Is this correct? Or does canonical tag only relate to duplicate content issues?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Making one landing page rank higher than another
I have a website which uses an individual landing pages to greet traffic for each suburb in our service area. For a long time we had one landing page which covered a region of suburbs but we've since added individual pages for those suburbs as well. However, Google will always display results for the old regional page, even though the new pages are optimized for searches in that area. Is there anything I can do to get Google to display the pages I want?
Technical SEO | | mark.schad0 -
Should Canonical be used if your site does not have any duplicate
Should canonical be used site wide even if my site is solid no duplicate content is generated. please explain your answer
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy0 -
Canonical tags and relative paths
Hi, I'm seeing a problem with Roger Bot crawling a clients site. In a campaign I am seeing you say that the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL. The tag is as follows:- /~/Standards-and....etc Google say:- relative paths are recognized as expected with the tag. Also, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL Is the issue with this, that there is a /~/, that there is no <base> link or just an issue with Roger? Best regards, Peter
Technical SEO | | peeveezee0