Review site using canonical tag in a puzzling way.
-
Have just been looking at a review site and they're using the canonical tag very strangely, to me.
For example, they may have several pages of reviews of the same item - they use the canonical tag on page 2/3/4 to point back at page 1 - and yet there is no duplication between the pages.
Any idea why they might be doing this?
-
Yes I agree Andy - many thanks for your response - can't see any logical reason - I took a look at Tripadvisor, out of interest - and although they're not using canonical tag oddly like the site I mention above, they were using the same title tags for each page of reviews (on same hotel) - which, again, doesn't seem logical - surely better if they simply add page 1, page 2 and so on to Title Tag?
-
It sounds to me like they might be trying to follow some advice but got it a little wrong - or perhaps they were expecting duplication but it never happened? Perhaps it came out-of-the-box like that?
There is no SEO benefit or trickery to why they are doing this though.
-Andy
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
-
Syntax: 'canonical' vs "canonical" (Apostrophes or Quotes) does it matter?
I have been working on a site and through all the tools (Screaming Frog & Moz Bar) I've used it recognizes the canonical, but does Google? This is the only site I've worked on that has apostrophes. rel='canonical' href='https://www.example.com'/> It's apostrophes vs quotes. Could this error in syntax be causing the canonical not to be recognized? rel="canonical"href="https://www.example.com"/>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ccox10 -
Our parent company has included their sitemap links in our robots.txt file - will that have an impact on the way our site is crawled?
Our parent company has included their sitemap links in our robots.txt file. All of their sitemap links are on a different domain and I'm wondering if this will have any impact on our searchability or potential rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tsmith1310 -
Backlinking 3 sites from same domain and backlinking main site too
Hello, we have 4 sites, in which 1 is a main site and rest 3 are niche sites All these 3 sites have dofollow links to main site from home page We got a high quality backlink - through which all 3 niche sites have got it from that domain Is it worth to add backlink from that domain to main site too, despite the fact the 3 sites already have recvd it and they all link to main site many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?
I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!0 -
Using the right Schema.org - & is there a penalty in using the wrong one?
Hi We have a set of reviewed products (in this case restaurants) that total an average rating of 4.0/5.0 from 800 odd reviews. We know to use schema/restaurant for individual restaurants we promote but what about for a list of cities, say restaurants in boston for example. For the product page containing all of Boston restaurants - should we use schema.org/restaurant (but its not 1 physical restaurant) or schema.org - product + agg review score? What do you do for your product listing pages? If we get it wrong, is there a penalty? Or this just simply up to us?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie1 -
Site #2 beats site #1 in every aspect?
Hey guys, loving SEOMoz so far and will definitely continue my subscription after the free trial. I have a question however, which I am really confused about. When researching my primary keyword, I have found that the second ranked site beats the top site in every single aspect, apart from domain age, which is almost 6 years for the top one and 6 months for the second. When I say every single aspect, I mean everything. More authority for the page and domain, more links, more anchor text links, more authoritive links, more social signals, more relevant links, better domain (although second ranked site is a .net), better MozRank, better MozTrust etc.... I have noticed though, that in the UK SERPs, those sites are switched, so #2 is actually #1. Could it be that the US SERPs just haven't updated yet, or am I missing something completely different.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | darrenspeed1 -
Best way to find broken links on a large site?
I've tried using Xenu, but this is a bit time consuming because it only tells you if the link sin't found & doesn't tell you which pages link to the 404'd page. Webmaster tools seems a bit dated & unreliable. Several of the links it lists as broken aren't. Does anyone have any other suggestions for compiling a list of broken links on a large site>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline1 -
Most efficient way to change site structure?
I would like to change my sites structure to be more efficient for SEO. I have a fear that the changes will have a potential impact on my current rankings, but know this would be a good long term decision. My site is wordpress, so the changes are relatively easy to make. What are some ways to change the site structure without damaging your rank? I would have to have to clean up a bunch of errors, so is the best way to simply do 301 redirects on the old pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dignan990