Mobile Canonical Tag Issue
-
Hey so,
For our site
we have the desktop version: www.site.com/product-name/product-code/The mobile version www.site.com/mobile/product-name/product-code
So...on the desktop version we'd have the following..
| |
Now my question is, what do we do as far as canonicals on the actual mobile URL?
Would it be this?
| |
| |OR are we NOT supposed to have mobile canonical tags whatsoever since we've already added "rel alternate" ?
Would like some clarificaiton.
| | |
-
Not the parameter, specifically speaking, You need to have the canonical on the mobile URL exactly match the primary URL of the non-mobile page. So removing the /mobile/ directory from the URL.
(Technically, a parameter is something added at the end of a URL with a "?" so /product/product-code?sort=desc for example, which you didn't show on your examples. Canonical URLS should never include such parameters. In fact one of the main reasons for using canonicals is to fix issues with extra unwanted parameters being indexed as separate page. Didn't want to risk confusion here.)
Paul
-
Hi Paul! If ThompsonPaul answered your question, would you mind marking his reply as a "Good Answer?" It helps us keep track of things, and it'll give him some bonus MozPoints.
-
Perfect, so then I need to remove the parameter that's included in the mobile canonical tag.
Thanks!
-
You need to include the canonical tag you described on the mobile URLs, Paul.
That's what "closes the loop" for the search engines to understand how those pages are related to each other, regardless of which one they land on first.
(another) Paul
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
-
Is it possible that Google would disregard canonical tag?
Hi all, I was wondering if it is possible for Google to diregard the canonical tag, if for example they decide it is wrongly put based on behavioural data. On the Natviscript Blog's individual blog posts there is a canonical tag for the www.nativescript.org/blog/details (printscreen - http://prntscr.com/e8kz5k). In my opinion it should not be there, and I've put request to our Engineering team for removal some time ago. Interestingly, all blog posts are indexed and got decent amount of organic traffic despite the tag. What do you think? Could it be that Google would disregard the tag based on usage data from let's say GA? Thanks, Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
What is better? No canonical or two canonicals to different pages?
I have a blogger site that is adding parameters and causing duplicate content. For example: www.mysite.com/?spref=bl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TMI.com
www.mysite.com/?commentPage=1 www.mysite.com/?m=1 www.mysite.com/?m=0 I decided to implement a canonical tag on these pages pointing to the correct version of the page. However, for the parameter ?m=0, the canonical keeps pointing to itself. Ex: www.mysite.com/?m=0 The canonical = www.mysite.com/?m=0 So now I have two canonicals for the same page. My question is if I should leave it, and let Google decide, or completely remove the canonicals from all pages?0 -
Can Googlebots read canonical tags on pages with javascript redirects?
Hi Moz! We have old locations pages that we can't redirect to the new ones because they have AJAX. To preserve pagerank, we are putting canonical tags on the old location pages. Will Googlebots still read these canonical tags if the pages have a javascript redirect? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Sitemap Issue - vol 2
Hello everyone! I validated the sitemap with different tools (w3Schools, and so on..) and no errors were found. So I uploaded into my site, tested it through GWT and BANG! all of a sudden there is a parsing error, which correspond to the last, and I mean last piece of code of thousand of lines, . I don't know why it isn't reading the code and it's giving me this as there are no other errors and I haven't got a clue about what to do in order to fix it! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
To "Rel canon" or not to "Rel canon" that is the question
Looking for some input on a SEO situation that I'm struggling with. I guess you could say it's a usability vs Google situation. The situation is as follows: On a specific shop (lets say it's selling t-shirts). The products are sorted as follows each t-shit have a master and x number of variants (a color). we have a product listing in this listing all the different colors (variants) are shown. When you click one of the t-shirts (eg: blue) you get redirected to the product master, where some code on the page tells the master that it should change the color selectors to the blue color. This information the page gets from a query string in the URL. Now I could let Google index each URL for each color, and sort it out that way. except for the fact that the text doesn't change at all. Only thing that changes is the product image and that is changed with ajax in such a way that Google, most likely, won't notice that fact. ergo producing "duplicate content" problems. Ok! So I could sort this problem with a "rel canon" but then we are in a situation where the only thing that tells Google that we are talking about a blue t-shirt is the link to the master from the product listing. We end up in a situation where the master is the only one getting indexed, not a problem except for when people come from google directly to the product, I have no way of telling what color the costumer is looking for and hence won't know what image to serve her. Now I could tell my client that they have to write a unique text for each varient but with 100 of thousands of variant combinations this is not realistic ir a real good solution. I kinda need a new idea, any input idea or brain wave would be very welcome. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReneReinholdt0 -
Should I use the canonical tag on all my mobile pages?
I've seen flavors of this question asked but did not see the exact response I was looking for. If I have a site at: www.site.com And I am creating a mobile version at: m.site.com (let's say a responsive design is not feasible at this time) And all the content on m.site.com is duplicative of the content on www.site.com What's the best way to handle that from an SEO perspective? Should I put a canonical tag on every mobile page pointing back to the www page? I assume that is better than a 'no index' tag on all pages of the mobile site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hbrown1080 -
Dupicated Site Issues?
We are launching a new site for the Australian market and the URL will just be siteAU.com. Currently the tech team (before we came on board) has it setup with almost exactly the same content (including the site css/nav/structure etc). Some product page content is slightly different, and category pages have different product orders, plus there are location pages that are specific to AU, but otherwise it's the same. The original site: site.ca has been around for 6+ years, with several thousand pages and solid organic ranking (though the last few months have dropped ) Will the new AU site create issues for the original domain? We also have siteUSA.com which follows the same logic and has been live for a while.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BMGSEO0 -
H1 Tags
Quick and easy most likely - Just need to clear a few point. I understand each page within the site should only have one H1 tag which should be the most important one. I also believe these only effect google ranking very slightly? right? Currently my CMS is system is pulling the H1 tag in from the page and automatically using the page heading that is on the page IE) the heading used for the content. Should this be a keyword / key phrase instead? and will it be duplicate if i used the same one on various pages in my site? Cheers guys look forward to hearing your feedback
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wazza19850