Do we have any risk or penalty for double canonicals?
-
Hi all,
We have double canonicals. From page A to page B to Page C. Will this be Okay for Google? Or definitely we need to make it A to C and B to C?
Thanks
-
Yes! I read the example backward. I'm with you! All pages should point to C.
-
Hi vtmoz.
I think Steve made a typo, saying to point all back to A.
My opinion here is:
- Avoid at any cost these canonical chains. They are messy to Google and it may get GoogleBot to reduce the importance of your pages.
- There is no risk of any know penalty. Google probably will not tell you in Search Console that you have a penalty for several canonicals.
- Point page A to C and page B to C.
Hope it helps.
Best Luck.
GR. -
I'd have them all pointing back to C so it's a little easier to manage long term. G just updated some of their docs related to canonical URL use cases with some great examples. From this page:
You can use a tag in the page header to indicate when a page is a duplicate of another page.
Suppose you want
https://example.com/dresses/green-dressesto be the canonical URL, even though a variety of URLs can access this content. Indicate this URL as canonical with these steps:-
Mark all duplicate pages with a rel="canonical" link element. Add a element with the attribute
rel="canonical"to the section of duplicate pages, pointing to the canonical page, like this one: -
If the canonical page has a mobile variant, add a
rel="alternate"link to it, pointing to the mobile version of the page: -
Add any hreflang or other redirects appropriate for the page.
They don't touch on the chain of canonical URLs you suggest but I'd have them all pointing to C since it's a scalable change.
[edit: updated to match example in OP]
-
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
-
Installing translation plugin on wordpress: Any checklist and risks?
Hi, We are going to install a translation plugin on our wordpress hosted website. It's going to generate sub directories like website.com/it/ or website.com/fr/. The plugin will create hreflang tags automatically in the pages and canonicals will be pointing to same pages. Is there anything to check before deploying this plugin? We are going to generate more than 30+ languages pages which will increase our website pages to 30 times in Google index. Will this dilute the page ranking or have any duplicate content issues? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Page content is not very similar but topic is same: Will Google considers the rel canonical tags?
Hi Moz community, We have multiple pages from our own different sub-domains for same topics. These pages even rank in SERP for related keywords. Now we are planning to show only one of the pages in SERP. We cannot redirect unfortunately. We are planning to use rel canonical tags. But the page content is not same, only 20% is similar and 80% is different but the context is same. If we use rel canonicals, does Google accepts this? If not what should I do? Making header tags similar works? How Google responds if content is not matching? Just ignore or any negative score? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Canonical Tag on All Pages
This is a new one for me. I have a client that has a canonical tag on almost every page of their site. Even on pages that don't need it. For example on http://www.client.com/examplex they had code: Maybe I have missed something, but is there a reason for this? Does this hurt the ranking of the page?
Algorithm Updates | | smulto0 -
Canonical from NOINDEX,FOLLOW pages - Bad idea?
Hi, We have an extensive online shop in Magento - to ensure that some of the pages with query strings are not indexed, we implemented a conditional NOINDEX,FOLLOW so that it will stop indexing any pages that have querystrings on it - We do need to use Canonical also - for other reasons - so my question is: If you have a page that is NOINDEX,FOLLOW and it has a rel canonical pointing to original, would it transfer that NOINDEX,FOLLOW to the main original page causing it problems? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | bjs20100 -
The risk of semi-hidden text, which only shows-up when page viewer clicks button.
Hello Mozzers! I'm working on a holiday accommodation website and there's an accessibility statement at the bottom of each of the (50 odd) accommodation types on offer. This only comes up on the page (the text extends on the same page as the accommodation type) when you click the button (although it's there in the HTML at all times!). My other concern is might this "hidden until button pressed" semi-hidden text be seen as potentially manipulative by Googlebot, although it isn't!
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart0 -
VRL Parameters Question - Exclude? or use a Canonical Tag?
I'm trying to figure something out, as I just finished my "new look" to an old website. It uses a custom built shopping cart, and the system worked pretty well until about a year when ranking went down. My primary traffic used to come from top level Brand pages. Each brand gets sorted by the shopping cart and a Parameter extension is added... So customers can click Page 1 , Page 2 , Page 3 etc. So for example : http://www.xyz.com/brand.html , http://www.xyz.com/brand.html?page=1 , http://www.xyz.com/brand.html?page=2 and so on... The page= is dynamic, therefore the page title, meta's, etc are the same, however the products displayed are different. I don't want to exclude the parameter page= completely, as the products are different on each page and obviously I would want the products to be indexed. However, at the same time my concern is that have these parameters might be causing some confusion an hence why I noticed a drop in google rankings. I also want to note - with my market, its not needed to break these pages up to target more specific keywords. Maybe using something like this would be the appropriate measure?
Algorithm Updates | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Canonical Tag being ignored?
I have a blog post I created and added a canonical to that page, yet the blog post is the one showing in Google's results and not the canonical version. Why is this?
Algorithm Updates | | Thos0030 -
Is this a possible Google penalty scenario?
In January we were banned from Google due to duplicate websites because of a server configuration error by our previous webmaster. Around 100 of our previously inactive domain names were defaulted to the directory of our company website during a server migration, thus showing the exact same site 100 times... obviously Google was not game and banned us. At the end of February we were allowed back into the SERPS after fixing the issue and have since steadily regained long-tail keyword phrase rankings, but in Google are still missing our main keyword phrase. This keyword phrase brings in the bulk of our best traffic, so obviously it's an issue. We've been unable to get above position 21 for this keyword, but in Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex (Russian SE) we're positions 3, 3, and 7 respectively. It seems to me there has to be a penalty in effect, as this keyword gets between 10 and 100 times as much traffic in Google than any of the ones we're ranked for, what do you think? EDIT: I should mention in the 4-5 years prior to the banning we had been ranked between 15 and 4th in Google, 80% of the time on the first page.
Algorithm Updates | | ACann0