Canonical for duplicate pages in ecommerce site and the product out of stock
-
I’m an SEO for an ecommerce site that sells shoes
I have duplicate pages for different colors of the same product (unique URL for each color),
Conventionally I have added canonical tags for each page, which direct to a specific product URL
My question is what happens when a product which the googlbot is direct to, is out of stock but is still listed in the canonical tag ?
-
If the canonical page disappears when it's out of stock, the user will get a 404 error when they try to access that URL. You'll need to canonicalize duplicates to a generic product or category page that won't disappear when the product is out of stock. Furthermore, if a product goes out of stock and you'll have more in stock later, it's best (for SEO purposes) to leave the page with an "out of stock" notice rather than remove it completely from the website.
-
I have a similar query. However in my case if the out of stock item is discontinued the page is removed but available product variations may remain.
What happens in the case where my canonical is out of stock and the page removed but other product variations are available?
Thanks,
-
To my knowledge, the behavior of the googlebot is not influenced by whether or not the product is out of stock. Is the page still accessible when the product is out of stock, or does it not display at all?
If the product page remains with an "out of stock" message, that's what users from search will see. If the product page becomes inaccessible when it goes out of stock temporarily, users from search will likely see a 404 page.
You may want to canonicalize to a higher level category page rather than one of the product variation pages. That way, it won't be an issue if one product variation goes out of stock.
May I ask which ecommerce software you are using?
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
-
Main Site and eCommerce Site URLs for SEO
My client currently has a main website on a url and an eCommerce site on a subdomain. The eCommerce site is currently not mobile friendly, has images that are too small and are problematic - and I believe it negates some of the SEO work we do for them. I had to turn off Google Shopping ads because the quality score was so low. That being said, they are rebuilding a shopping cart on a new platform that will be mobile friendly BUT the images are going to be tiny until they slowly replace images over several months. Would you keep the shopping cart on a subdomain, or make it part of the main website URL? Can it negatively impact the progress we have made on the main site SEO.
Technical SEO | | jerrico10 -
404 Error Pages being picked up as duplicate content
Hi, I recently noticed an increase in duplicate content, but all of the pages are 404 error pages. For instance, Moz site crawl says this page: https://www.allconnect.com/sc-internet/internet.html has 43 duplicates and all the duplicates are also 404 pages (https://www.allconnect.com/Coxstatic.html for instance is a duplicate of this page). Looking for insight on how to fix this issue, do I add an rel=canonical tag to these 60 error pages that points to the original error page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | kfallconnect0 -
How to avoid duplicate content when blogging from a site
I have a wordpress plastic surgery website. I have a wordpress blog on the site. My concern is avoiding duplicate content penalties when I blog. I use my blog to add new information about procedures that have pages on the same topic on the main site. Invariably same keywords and phrases can appear in the blog-will this be considered Duplicate content? Also is it black hat to insert anchor text in a blog linking back to site content-ie internal link or is one now and then helpful
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Duplicate Content of Reseller Product?
There is a particular product/service that I resell through an API. There are quite a few of them and each one requires a lot of content. The company provides web content for each product but I'm wondering about the SEO implications of using it? Obviously using the content, it will not be unique so I won't be able to rank (easily at least) for these products. Are there any _negative_results that I can get from using this content though? If I simply won't rank for those products it's not an issue since I get traffic elsewhere. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | reliabox0 -
My number of duplicate page title and temporary redirect warnings increased after I enabled Canonical urls. Why? Is this normal?
After receiving my first SEO moz report, I had some duplicate page titles and temporary redirects. I was told enabling Canonical urls would take of this. I enabled the Canonical URLs, but the next report showed that both of those problems had increased three fold after enabled the canonical urls! What happened?
Technical SEO | | btsseo780 -
Does google like Category pages or pages with lots of Products on them?
We are having an issue with getting Google to rank the page we want. To have this page http://www.jakewilson.com/c/52/-/346/Cruiser-Motorcycle-Tires rank for the key word Cruiser Motorcycle Tires; however, this page http://www.jakewilson.com/t/52/-/343/752/Cruiser-Motorcycle-Tires is ranking instead and it has less links and page authority according to site explorer and it is farther down in the hierarchy. I am wondering if google just likes pages that have actual products on them instead of a page leading to the page with all the products. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Duplicate page titles on Ecommerce
Hi, My question is in reference to an E-commerce site- Our SEO MOZ scan is showing many errors for Duplicates- such as Duplicate titles - The majority of these are on the products map- and the page titles are Products Map :: Company Name How do we get correct this or does Google not penalize for it? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | frankrizzo0 -
Old proudct pages - eComm Site
Hello, Geeks.com currently has approx. 194k pages in Google index. (approx. 30k suppl.) http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ageeks.com+inurl%3Aadditem&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Ltp&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=site:www.geeks.com%2F&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=876898a2ea0c82c7&biw=1512&bih=641 We have many thousands of old product urls which have gone out of stock, never to "see the light of day" again. 14 years worth! Should we be 301'ing all old products pages that go out of stock, if we know for certain we will never carry that SKU again? If we were to do a "mass" 301 of 30k+ urls how would google or other SE's react to that? Could there be any negative implications to doing so? What is considered best practice for eComm sites, as I imagine we are not alone with this type of situation. Thank you in advance. Michael B.
Technical SEO | | JustinGeeks0