If a URL canonically points to another link, is that URL indexed?
-
Hi,
I have two URL both talking about keyword phrase 'counting aggregated cells'
The first URL has canonical link pointing to the second URL, but if one searches for 'counting aggregated cells' both URLs are shown in the results.
The first URL is the pdf, and i need only second URL (the landing page) to be shown in the search results.
The canonical links should tell Google which URL to index, i don't understand why both URLs are present in search results? Is 'noindex' for the first URL only solution?
I am using Yoast SEO for my website.
Thank you for the answers.
-
Hey Lana,
Similar to what Anthony said, you're setup should keep the PDF url from being indexed. In order to help ensure the PDF doesn't get indexed you can do the following:
- Use the robots.txt file to block Google crawlers:
User-agent: *
Disallow: *.pdf
- Use rel="nofollow" on links that point to the PDF
-
If set up correctly, using the canonical tag as described above will usually keep the actual PDF out of the index. Using NoIndex is a guaranteed method to keep it out of the index.
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
-
URL Indexing with Keyword
Hi, My webpage url is indexed in Google but don't show when searching the Main Keyword. How can i index it with keyword. It should show on any SERP when the keyword is searched. Any suggestions.
Technical SEO | | green.h1 -
What is the best practice to re-index the de-indexed pages due to a bad migration
Dear Mozers, We have a Drupal site with more than 200K indexed URLs. Before 6 months a bad website migration happened without proper SEO guidelines. All the high authority URLs got rewritten by the client. Most of them are kept 404 and 302, for last 6 months. Due to this site traffic dropped more than 80%. I found today that around 40K old URLs with good PR and authority are de-indexed from Google (Most of them are 404 and 302). I need to pass all the value from old URLs to new URLs. Example URL Structure
Technical SEO | | riyas_
Before Migration (Old)
http://www.domain.com/2536987
(Page Authority: 65, HTTP Status:404, De-indexed from Google) After Migration (Current)
http://www.domain.com/new-indexed-and-live-url-version Does creating mass 301 redirects helps here without re-indexing the old URLS? Please share your thoughts. Riyas0 -
Hot Linking
We recently noticed that our website www.efurniturehouse.com is being hot linked by axsoris.com a Dutch website with many malware issue. Any suggestions how to proceed? Thanks in advance Tony
Technical SEO | | OCFurniture1 -
What is the best practice to seperate different locations and languages in an URL? At the moment the URL is www.abc.com/ch/de. Is there a better way to structure the URL from an SEO perspective?
I am looking for a solution for using a new URL structure without using www.abc.com**/ch/de** in the URL to deliver the right languages in specific countries where more than one language are spoken commonly. I am looking forward to your ideas!
Technical SEO | | eviom0 -
External Linking & Your sites Link juice
Hey guys, quick question. Does a page lose link juice when it gives link juice? If I link to an outside site, do I lose that same amount of link juice or is it just applied to there site and not removed from mine? I understand that linking to a competitor can in turn help him and hurt me (if he then is seen as more relevant than me to google) but does it have a direct relation to hurting/removing my page link juice? Hope this all makes sense. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
Non existant URLs being generated in index
Hi all, I have a pretty big problem with my site at the moment which I'm worried will have an impact on my rankings. I've just had a crawl test done and for some reason I get a load of urls returned that don't actually exist... For example I am getting urls like this in my crawl test and xml sitemap: www.applicablejobs.com/jobs/add/android-designer/android-designer/android-designer/android-developer/android-developer/ www.applicablejobs.com/jobs/add/android-designer/android-designer/android-designer/android-developer/iphone-designer/ All the urls seem to start off with www.applicablejobs.com/jobs/ and there is an entry for every conceivable combination of slugs. I can only assume that if the crawl test and an xml sitemap generator is indexing these urls then Google and other search engines probably are too. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this issue and what can I do to remove them from Googles index if they are? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Benji870 -
Internal Linking: Site-wide VS Content Links
I just watched this video in which Matt Cutts talks about the ancient 100 links per page limit. I often encounter websites which have massive navigation (elaborate main menu, side bar, footer, superfooter...etc) in addition to content area based links. My question is do you think Google passes votes (PageRank and anchor text) differently from template links such as navigation to the ones in the content area, if so have you done any testing to confirm?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Petrovic0 -
When moving my ecommerce website from one host to another should I also 301 all my image urls?
I'm going to be 301'ing a lot of pages, but should i also 301 my image URLS? Any other helpful hints would be awesome too, as this will be my first move online ever. We've been with our host 3 years. Thanks! Paul Serra STbands.com, Owner
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0