Canonical Chain

[Nigel_Carr]

This is quite advanced so maybe Rand can give me an answer?

I often have seen questions surrounding a 301 chain where only 85% of the link juice is passed on to the first target and 85% of that to the next one, up to three targets. But how about a canonical chain?

What do I mean by this:?

I have a client who sells lighting so I will use a real example (sans domain)

I don't want 'new-product' pages appearing in SERPS. They dilute link equity for the categories they replicate and often contain identical products to the main categories and subcategories. I don't want to no index them all together I'd rather tell Google they are the same as the higher category/sub category. (discussion whether a noindex/follow tag would be better?)

If I canonicalize

new-products/ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17/kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217 to

/ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17/kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217

I then subsequently discover that everything in kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217 is already in /kitchen-lighting-c17 and I decide to canonicalize those two - so I place a /kitchen-lighting-c17 canonical on /kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217. Then what happens to the new-products canonical?

Is it the same rule - does it pass 85% of link equity back to the non new-product URL and 85% of that back to the category? does it just not work? or should I do noindexi/follow

Now before you jump in:

Let's assume these are done over a period of time because the obvious answer is:

Canonicalize both back to /ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17

I know that and that is not what I am asking.

What if they are done in a sequence what is the real result?

I don't want to patronise anyone but please read this carefully before giving an answer.

Regards

Nigel

Carousel Projects.

[Nigel_Carr]

Anyone have any more thoughts on this please?

[Nigel_Carr]

OK, thanks for that - I'm still a bit cynical about that amd am pretty sure that doesn't go for a redirect chain but: The reason I asked for the person answering to read the question properly was so that I wouldn't get half an answer

please could someone read it all the way through and give me their thoughts?

Thanks.

[EGOL]

Full link juice is now passed through redirects.   Google stopped dinging the value of links that pass through a redirect about a year ago.   More info here....

http://searchengineland.com/google-no-pagerank-dilution-using-301-302-30x-redirects-anymore-254608