Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google?
-
Hi, we re-branded and launched a new website in February 2016. In June we saw a steep drop in the number of URLs indexed, and there have continued to be smaller dips since. We started an account with Moz and found several thousand high priority crawl errors for duplicate pages and have since fixed those with canonical tags. However, we are still seeing the number of URLs indexed drop.
Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this. A good portion of our URLs have canonical tags because they are just events with different dates, but otherwise the content of the page is the same.
-
Thanks so much! Really helpful!
-
Not exactly. Its not so much that the canonical "supersedes" an index, follow tag.... a canonical tag establishes equivalency while a NoIndex is more like a "does not equal." The Index, Follow is still there and being seen by bots as they crawl... in fact, if you had NoIndex on a page with a Canonical Tag, it may not even see the canonical at all since you told it to NoIndex the page. The Meta Robots Index tag comes first allowing the bots to crawl and index the page but then the canonical sets up equivalency to a separate page. So if your canonical tag is being respected, it doesn't wind up doing the same thing as a NoIndex (though it may seem that way) nor does it do the same thing as a 301 (though there are similarities in how equity is passed). Since a canonical establishes an equivalency, you'll find that the Canon Page will eventually take the place of the Canonicalized Page in search results because you're telling them the Canonicalized Page _is _the Canon Page & that the Canon page is the right version of both.
-
Thanks, Mike! So, just to clarify, for a particular URL, if we have Meta Robots set to "Index/Follow" and that same URL has a canonical tag, the canonical tag would supersede the robot command and the URL would not be indexed?
-
If a URL was indexed and has since had a canonical added to it pointing to another page, it will eventually disappear from results. Basically the pages gets consolidated with its canon page. If the bots choose to respect the canonical tag in that instance, all signals get passed to the canon page while still allowing the page and information to be accessible by human visitors. As such, there's no reason to keep the page in the index because you're telling the bots that another page is the correct page instead. This is not the same as NoIndexing a page but will eventually remove a page from the index much in the same way that a 301 will pass equity along to another page while eventually removing the redirected page from the index in favor of the page being redirected to.
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
-
Old url is still indexed
A couple of months ago we requested a change of address in Search console. The new, correct url is already indexed. Yet when we search the old url (with site:www.) we find that the old url is still indexed. in Google Webmaster Tools the amount of indexed pages is reduced to 1. Is there another way to remove old urls?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
Having trouble getting listed on Google News
My friend has a site: http://www.behindthehedges.com/ and is having trouble getting accepted into Google News. I read over the technical guidelines and best practices listed on Google's site. It appears they have everything covered. However, they keep getting rejected. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | ninel_P0 -
Is a canonical tag required for already redirecting URLs?
Hi everyone, One of our websites was changed to non-www to www. The non-www pages were then redirected to avoid duplicate issue. Moz and Screaming Frog flagged a number of these redirected pages as missing canonical tags. Is the canonical tag still required for pages already redirecting? Or is it detecting another possible duplicate page that we haven't redirected yet? Also, the rankings for this website isn't improving despite having us optimising these pages as best as we could. I'm wondering if this canonical tag issue may be affecting it. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | nhhernandez0 -
Mobile site not getting indexed
My site is www.findyogi.com - a shopping comparison site The mobile site is hosted at m.findyogi.com I fixed my sitemap and attribution to mobile site in May last week. My mobile site pages are getting de-indexed since then. Website - www.findyogi.com/mobiles/motorola/motorola-moto-g-16gb-b95ef8/price - indexed Mobile - m.findyogi.com/mobiles/motorola/motorola-moto-g-16gb-b95ef8/price - _not indexed. _ Google is crawling my website and mobile site normally. What am I am doing wrong?
Technical SEO | | namansr0 -
Does hidden text, which appears for an onclick event, get indexed by Google and what SEO impact does this have?
I'm trying to simplify a conversion process with an onclick event to show text rather than having a completely separate page, but wondering if this is going to negatively impact on SEO, especially considering it's hidden text. I've seen a couple of things out there where you could position the text off the screen and the onclick results in it coming on.
Technical SEO | | JuiceBoxOM0 -
Do I need to add canonical link tags to pages that I promote & track w/ UTM tags?
New to SEOmoz, loving it so far. I promote content on my site a lot and am diligent about using UTM tags to track conversions & attribute data properly. I was reading earlier about the use of link rel=canonical in the case of duplicate page content and can't find a conclusive answer whether or not I need to add the canonical tag to these pages. Do I need the canonical tag in this case? If so, can the canonical tag live in the HEAD section of the original / base page itself as well as any other URLs that call that content (that have UTM tags, etc)? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | askotzko1 -
Magento Canonical Tags
Magento pages have been giving me a lot of trouble with the canonical tags. In some cases duplicate pages are showing up, so I need to add the canonical tag. In other cases I'm getting an error that there are multiple canonical tags per page. How can I get my pages canonized without duplicate tags? It seems like it's either too much or not enough, no matter what I do. Note: this only applies to category and product pages.
Technical SEO | | GravitateOnline0 -
Speed up the process of removing URLs from Google Index
Hi guys, We have done some work to try to remove pages from Google index. We have done the following: 1. Noindex tag 2. Make pages returning a 404 response. Is there anyway to notify Google about these changes so we can speed up the process of removing these pages from Google index? Also regarding the URL removal tool, Google says that it's used to remove URLs from search results, does it mean the URLs are removed from their index too? Many thanks guys David
Technical SEO | | sssrpm0