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
-
Canonical error from Google
Moz couldn't explain this properly and I don't understand how to fix it. Google emailed this morning saying "Alternate page with proper canonical tag." Moz also kinda complains about the main URL and the main URL/index.html being duplicate. Of course they are. The main URL doesn't work without the index.html page. What am I missing? How can I fix this to eliminate this duplicate problem which to me isn't a problem?
Technical SEO | | RVForce0 -
If Google's index contains multiple URLs for my homepage, does that mean the canonical tag is not working?
I have a site which is using canonical tags on all pages, however not all duplicate versions of the homepage are 301'd due to a limitation in the hosting platform. So some site visitors get www.example.com/default.aspx while others just get www.example.com. I can see the correct canonical tag on the source code of both versions of this homepage, but when I search Google for the specific URL "www.example.com/default.aspx" I see that they've indexed that specific URL as well as the "clean" one. Is this a concern... shouldn't Google only show me the clean URL?
Technical SEO | | JMagary0 -
How to remove all sandbox test site link indexed by google?
When develop site, I have a test domain is sandbox.abc.com, this site contents are same as abc.com. But, now I search site:sandbox.abc.com and aware of content duplicate with main site abc.com My question is how to remove all this link from goolge. p/s: I have just add robots.txt to sandbox and disallow all pages. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Is all in one seo getting rid of my google authorship?
is all in one seo getting rid of my google authorship? I had it before and after installing All in One it is not coming up anymore. I have nothing in the google plus field of the main All in one settings, and I have it inserted in my user->your profile. When I view page source it is there. But it does not show up in the search, see: https://www.google.com/search?q=chicago+nightlife+superstar It even works in the rich snippet tester: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howlatthemoon.com%2Fdueling_piano_bar%2Fchicago-nightlife-superstar%2F&html= Also my title has changed. It is correct in the tester but not in Google. Please help!!!
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
Does this content get indexed?
A lot of content on this site is displayed in pop up pages. Eg. Visit the Title page http://www.landgate.wa.gov.au/corporate.nsf/web/Certificate+of+Title To access the sample report or fee details, the info is shown in a pop up page with a strange url. Example: http://www.landgate.wa.gov.au/corporate.nsf/web/Certificate+of+Title+-+Fee+Details I can't see any of these pages being indexed in Google or other search engines when I do a site search: http://www.landgate.wa.gov.au/corporate.nsf/web/Certificate+of+Title+-+Fee+Details Is there a way to get this content indexed besides telling the client to restructure this content?
Technical SEO | | Bigheadigital0 -
Using a canonical tag to eliminate ID variables?
My research on seomoz has resulted in conflicting ideas regarding the canonical tag. One article says avoid it, the other says embrace it. We have fixed a majority of our architecture problems using redirects for duplicate content, however, when we send out newsletters we still have these pesky tracking ids. I figured out how to remove them from analytics, but am unsure of how this affects our SEO. An example of one of our links is: https://www.quicklearn.com/transcript/?utm_source=news101011&utm_medium=e&utm_campaign=newclass&nlid=news101011&UID=2287 The original url being www.quicklearn.com/transcript/ the custom (non-Google) variables being nlid and uid. Is this a problem? Do I need rel cononical tags on each and every page?
Technical SEO | | QuickLearnTraining0 -
Blank Canonical URL
So my devs have the canonical URL loaded up on pages automatically, and in most cases this gets done correctly. However we ran across a bug that left some of these blank like so: Does anyone know what effect that would have? I am trying to provide a priority for this so I can say "FIX IT NOW" or "Fix it after the other 'FIX IT NOW' type of items". Let me know if you have any ideas. I just want to be sure I am not telling google that all of these pages are like the home page. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SL_SEM0 -
Does Bing support cross-domain canonical tags?
We have heard Bing takes canonical tags as hints, but do they support cross-domain canonical tags? I don't think this has ever been discussed? Does anyone have an answer or insight? Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | bonnierSEO0