Canonicalize or Block?
-
Hi Mozers,
We have staff profile pages w/ one main URL and then URLs with query parameters and jump links to take you to different parts of the page.
The longer URLs with parameters canonicalize to the main pages but should they also be nonidexed?
Thanks,
Yael
-
Thanks!
-
Got it, thanks!!!
-
Hi Yael
I completely agree - it is pretty much what canonical tags were developed for.
Regards
Nigel
-
Canonical and noindex are contradictory, Yael. It's either.or, never both. And in the case you describe, I doubt you could no-index the versions with parameters without doing it to the main URL as well (since technically they are all the same page code).
What you are describing is the classic use case for canonical tags - the exact same page referred to by multiple different URLs.
Hope that makes sense?
Paul
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
-
WEBMASTER console: increase in the number of URLs we were blocked from crawling due to authorization permission errors.
Hi guys,I received this warning in my webmaster console: "Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs we were blocked from crawling due to authorization permission errors." So i went to "Crawl Errors" section and i found such errors under "Access denied" status: ?page_name=Cheap+Viagra+Gold+Online&id=471 ?page_name=Cheapest+Viagra+Us+Licensed+Pharmacies&id=1603 and many happy URLs like these. Does anybody know what this is and where it comes from? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | odmsoft0 -
Google indexing despite robots.txt block
Hi This subdomain has about 4'000 URLs indexed in Google, although it's blocked via robots.txt: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch&oq=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch This has been the case for almost a year now, and it does not look like Google tends to respect the blocking in http://www1.swisscom.ch/robots.txt Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
Canonicalization on my website
I am kind of new to all this but I would like to understand canonicalization. I have a website which when you arrive on it is www.mysite.com but once inside and flicking back to the homepage it reverts to www.mysite.com/index.html. Should I be doing something re canonicalization? If so what? Will the link juice be diluted by having two home page versions? Thanks
Technical SEO | | FCAbroad0 -
Google insists robots.txt is blocking... but it isn't.
I recently launched a new website. During development, I'd enabled the option in WordPress to prevent search engines from indexing the site. When the site went public (over 24 hours ago), I cleared that option. At that point, I added a specific robots.txt file that only disallowed a couple directories of files. You can view the robots.txt at http://photogeardeals.com/robots.txt Google (via Webmaster tools) is insisting that my robots.txt file contains a "Disallow: /" on line 2 and that it's preventing Google from indexing the site and preventing me from submitting a sitemap. These errors are showing both in the sitemap section of Webmaster tools as well as the Blocked URLs section. Bing's webmaster tools are able to read the site and sitemap just fine. Any idea why Google insists I'm disallowing everything even after telling it to re-fetch?
Technical SEO | | ahockley0 -
Quality Issues: My blog is blocked on Google Search Engine
Hi Webmasters, I got an email from google team. The email is included below. **Google Webmaster Tools: Quality Issues on http://abcdblogger.com/**August 8, 2012 Dear site owner or webmaster of http://abcdblogger.com/, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see ourWebmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team My blog is completely blocked on Google Search engine. I removed all existing posts and reinstalled a fresh version of wordpress and wrote a good article. I redirected all broken links my homepage with a 301. After making those changes I submitted a reconsideration request to Google, But they declined it. I doubt that the reason for blocking could be due to the backlinks pointing to my domain. I think Google's Disavow Tool help me to remove low quality backlinks, But how can I sort low quality backlinks using Opensite Explorer? If possible can you create a text file with all possible low quality links, So that I could submit it using Google Disavow Tool. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | hafiskani0 -
Blocked by meta-robots but there is no robots file
OK, I'm a little frustred here. I've waited a week for the next weekly index to take place after changing the privacy setting in a wordpress website so Google can index, but I still got the same problem. Blocked by meta-robots, no index, no follow. But I do not see a robot file anywhere and the privacy setting in this Wordpress site is set to allow search engines to index this site. Website is www.marketalert.ca What am I missing here? Why can't I index the rest of the website and is there a faster way to test this rather than wait another week just to find out it didn't work again?
Technical SEO | | Twinbytes0 -
Robots.txt blocking site or not?
Here is the robots.txt from a client site. Am I reading this right --
Technical SEO | | 540SEO
that the robots.txt is saying to ignore the entire site, but the
#'s are saying to ignore the robots.txt command? See http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html for documentation on how to use the robots.txt file To ban all spiders from the entire site uncomment the next two lines: User-Agent: * Disallow: /0