If you use canonicals do the meta descriptions need to be different?

[Shirley.Fenlason]

For example, we have 3 different subsites with the same pages. We will put canonicals so they reference the main pages. Do the meta descriptions have to be different for each of the three pages? How does Google handle meta data when using canonicals?

[GastonRiera]

I don't really know any best practices in this topic. Me, in your case, I'd leave them just as they are now. Applying the canonicals, of course.

[Shirley.Fenlason]

Thanks for your response.

Would you recommend as a best practice to include/repeat the same metadata on all the pages referencing the other (canonical) page or should we leave the metadata fields on the pages with canonicals blank?

[GastonRiera]

Hi there,

Long story short: Nop it doesn't care that both pages with canonicals have the same meta data. It only matters the selected by the canonical.

Best luck.
GR.

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Basically, canonical link tells search engines to move all the ranking weight to a page, linked by canonical link. Therefore if google thinks that page A should be ranked for a given keyphrase, but this page A has a canonical link to another page B, page B will be considered as a ranking nominee and page A will be discarded. Which means that all meta data and other things WILL be taken from page B.

Hope this helps.