How rel=canonical works with index, noindex ?
-
Hello all,
I had always wondered how the index,noindex affects to the canonical. And also if the canonical post should be included in the sitemap or not.
I posted this
http://www.comparativadebancos.co...
and with a rel=canonical to this that was published at the beginning of the month
http://www.comparativadebancos.co...
but then I have the first one in google
http://www.google.com/search?aq=f...
May be this is evident for you but, what is really doing the canonical? If I publish something with the canonical pointing to another page, will it still be indexed by google but with no penalty for duplicate content? Or the usual behaviour should have been to havent indexed the first post but just the second one?
Should I also place a noindex in the first post in addition to the canonical?
What am I missing here?
thanks
-
Antonio,
I came into this question a little late so I'm not sure how it was back when you asked it, but right now the problem I see is that the page that does exist ( http://www.comparativadebancos.com/mejores-depositos-bancarios-de-marzo-de-2011/ ) has a rel canonical tag pointing to the page that doesn't exist ( http://www.comparativadebancos.com/depositos/marzo/ ), which returns a 404 response code.
I think right now the best thing you can do would be to change the rel canonical tag on /mejores-depositos-bancarios-de-marzo-de-2011/ to be http://www.comparativadebancos.com/mejores-depositos-bancarios-de-marzo-de-2011/ .
-
I im saying that it is important to Google to tell them more what you want to use as your content without possible parameter "/" "www" adding a duplicate content penalty to your website.
-
Hi,
I agree that it will not help you to too much with stolen content. Unless Google has indexed you 1st they would probably give you 1st rights to the disputed content. The reason I believe you are getting with such good results on Google a non-indexed URL or what should be nonindexed is Google indexes everything regardless and from what Matt Cutts said "According to Google, the canonical link element is not considered to be a directive, but a hint that the web crawler will "honor strongly" "
my belief is Google is throwing more honor to dealing with the canonical.
I hope I was of some help.
Sincerely,
Thomas Zickell
-
Blueprint, as far as I understand it can't really be used to prevent people stealing your content because you need to have to similar versions and place the tag pointing to the one that is of lesser value or that you don't want to come up in place of the original. Or are you saying if you find some of your content elsewhere offsite you can place a canonical link to it, and this will tell the spiders it is your content rather than theres?
Antonio, if you have placed the tag on the newer page pointing to the older page you are telling the spiders that the newer page is the preferred/more original content.
-
I would say that rel=canonical is one of the single most vital parts of a website no matter how it's Written or hosted all must be set up to appropriately take traffic and simply tell Google I'm not trying to duplicate my content here is my <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/" /> and that way if anyone does haven't come across your content and try to make it their own they will be the ones penalized for stealing it not you. Always put this tag in the page that you have created and the one that you want Google to understand is your copy of your website content here is some info from Matt Cutts at Google as well as Wikipedia hope I am of help
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/
A canonical link element is an HTML element that helps webmasters prevent duplicate content issues by specifying the "canonical", or "preferred", version of a web page<sup id="cite_ref-googleblog_0-0" class="reference">[1]</sup><sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference">[2]</sup><sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference">[3]</sup> as part of search engine optimization.
Duplicate content issues occur when the same content is accessible from multiple URLs.<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference">[4]</sup> For example, <tt>http://www.example.com/page.html</tt> would be considered by search engines to be an entirely different page to<tt>http://www.example.com/page.html?parameter=1</tt>, even though both URLs return the same content. Another example is essentially the same (tabular) content, but sorted differently.
In February 2009, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced support for the canonical link element, which can be inserted into the section of a web page, to allow webmasters to prevent these issues.<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference">[5]</sup> The canonical link element helps webmasters make clear to the search engines which page should be credited as the original.
According to Google, the canonical link element is not considered to be a directive, but a hint that the web crawler will "honor strongly".<sup id="cite_ref-googleblog_0-1" class="reference">[1]</sup>
While the canonical link element has its benefits, Matt Cutts, who is the head of Google's webspam team, has claimed that the search engine prefers the use of 301 redirects. Cutts claims the preference for redirects is because Google's spiders can choose to ignore a canonical link element if they feel it is more beneficial to do so.<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference">[6]</sup>
[edit]Examples of the
canonical
link element<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/" />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/directory/page.html" /> ```
-
you should give it time to settle down in the SERPS ... the results are muddy for a while but your canonicals will eventually show up if they have been implemented correctly.
-
I have already done it but my question come after this one
Where Rand suggest me to do the canonical thing I am explaining here. So my doubt is why it is indexing the new post better than the old one and how this is supposed to work.
From my understanding and also from your link, if I use rel=canonical is the "canonical" url the one that has to be indexed and not the one with "rel=canonical" but it has not been my case and now I have both indexed...
Any suggestion?
-
Is it the opposite. The new one has a rel=canonical to the old one because it was written with the same content that the old one but then it appears in the index.
Then the new one has been indexed and I thought it wasnt going to be indexed. But at the same time it ranks much higger than the old one...
-
According to Google a rel=canonical is just a hint 9although they say they strongly honour it) - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html. This might explain why your old page is still showing up int he results.
Has your new page been indexed yet?
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
-
Google selecting incorrect URL as canonical: 'Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical'
Hi there, A number of our URLs are being de-indexed by Google. When looking into this using Google Search Console the same message is appearing on multiple pages across our sites: 'Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical' 'IndexingIndexing allowed? YesUser-declared canonical - https://www.mrisoftware.com/ie/products/real-estate-financial-software/Google-selected canonical - https://www.mrisoftware.com/uk/products/real-estate-financial-software/'Has anyone else experienced this problem?How can I get Google to select the correct, user-declared canoncial? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | nfrank0 -
Any idea why pages are not being indexed?
Hi Everyone, One section on our website is not being indexed. The product pages are, but not some of the subcategories. These are very old pages, so thought it was strange. Here is an example one one: https://www.moregems.com/loose-cut-gemstones/prasiolite-loose-gemstones.html If you take a chunk of text, it is not found in Google. No issues in Bing/Yahoo, only Google. You think it takes a submission to Search Console? Jeff
Technical SEO | | vetofunk1 -
Rel Canonical, Follow/No Follow in htaccess?
Very quick question, are rel canonical, follow/no follow tags, etc. written in the htaccess file?
Technical SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Google Webmaster tools Sitemap submitted vs indexed vs Index Status
I'm having an odd error I'm trying to diagnose. Our Index Status is growing and is now up to 1,115. However when I look at Sitemaps we have 763 submitted but only 134 indexed. The submitted and indexed were virtually the same around 750 until 15 days ago when the indexed dipped dramatically. Additionally when I look under HTML improvements I only find 3 duplicate pages, and I ran screaming frog on the site and got similar results, low duplicates. Our actual content should be around 950 pages counting all the category pages. What's going on here?
Technical SEO | | K-WINTER0 -
Wordpress: Should your blog posts be noindex?
Wordpress defaults all blog posts to no index/nofollow Is this how it should be handled? I understand the nofollow from the page.com/blog to the page.com/blog/blogtitle But why noindex? We have Yoast installed and this is the default.
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Rel=author Verification
I am working to add rel=author markup to my companies website. We have about a dozen editors each posting under their own byline. Because my team does not have full access to the website's code and our lack of "author" pages, we are using the Email Verification Method. We have set up Google Plus Fan pages for each of the editors. Can I use these pages as the verification source - or does it need to be a personal profile. Thanks, Mike
Technical SEO | | SuperMikeLewis0 -
Rel-canonical tag
Hi, I'm having some confusion with the rel-canonical tag. A few months ago we implemented the rel-canonical tag because we had many errors specifically duplicate page content come upon the SEOmoz web app (mostly because we use tracking code). I had asked what to do about this and was advised by the SEOmoz web app to implement the rel-canonical tag. However, when I'm working on the Keyword Optimizer Tool, it always checks off that I'm using the rel-canonical tag improperly, and then when I go into our sites' CMS for that page and uncheck "Use Canonical URL", the keyword optimizer tool up's my grade for that correction/that I've made an improvement. So my question is if the page I'm working on is the one I want search engines to find, should I not be using the Canonical URL tag? Should the Canonical URL tag only be used on URL's with the tracking code?
Technical SEO | | aircyclemegan0 -
Did I implement the Canonical Correctly?
Hello, I am trying for the first time to implement a canonical redirect on a page and would really appreciate it if someone could tell me if this was done correctly. I am trying to do a canonical redirect: -from http://www.diamondtours.com/default.aspx -to http://www.diamondtours.com/ As you will see in the source code of the default.aspx page, the line of code written is: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.diamondtours.com" /> Is this correct? Any guidance is greatly appreciated. Jeffrey Ferraro
Technical SEO | | JeffFerraro0