Change Google's version of Canonical link
-
Hi
My website has millions of URLs and some of the URLs have duplicate versions. We did not set canonical all these years. Now we wanted to implement it and fix all the technical SEO issues.
I wanted to consolidate and redirect all the variations of a URL to the highest pageview version and use that as the canonical because all of these variations have the same content.
While doing this, I found in Google search console that Google has already selected another variation of URL as canonical and not the highest pageview version.
My questions:
-
I have millions of URLs for which I have to do 301 and set canonical. How can I find all the canonical URLs that Google has autoselected? Search Console has a daily quota of 100 or something.
-
Is it possible to override Google's version of Canonical? Meaning, if I set a variation as Canonical and it is different than what Google has already selected, will it change overtime in Search Console?
-
Should I just do a 301 to highest pageview variation of the URL and not set canonicals at all? This way the canonical that Google auto selected might get redirected to the highest pageview variation of the URL.
Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
-
-
Hi Gaston!
Thanks for getting back to me and answering all my questions. I will work on getting the Canonical live and then wait to see how Google reacts before doing the redirects.
Best regards,
A -
Hi there!
I hear you, had some simililar issues with big sites that i've worked with.
I would go with the "highest page viewed" page to be the canonical, you should select the one that you consider serves users with the best experience or match their search intent. That said, i'll answer your questions:
- No, there is way to get that many URLs from Search Console. Through API the most I could ever get was arround 200k URLs.
- It's not that hard as "overriding" the actual canonical page selected by google... You should tell Google wich is your preferred canonical page, then G will decide whether to use it or not.
- Is always wise to go first with a canonical, so you can analyze how google reacts with that change. Then wait a little time, a few weeks and if everything went as planned set redirections.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.
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
-
Changing URL's During a Site Redesign
What are the effects of changing URL's during a site redesign following all of the important processes (ie: 301 redirects, reindexing in google, submitting a new sitemap) ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jennifer-garcia0 -
Does Google Delay or Graduate SERP Changes?
You can request re-indexing of a single page via Google Search Console. It would seem to me you could use this feature to experiment with on-page changes to see the rank change to determine which changes have the most effect. For the sake of this thread, lets temporarily forget that the relative importance on various on-page factors has already been reverse engineered to a degree so we already have a general idea to som extent. It would seem to me if I were Google, I would introduce either a random delay period, or, temper rank change after reindexing. What I mean by that latter point is say a reindex takes a page from position 20 to 10. If it is 'tempered' so to speak on Day 2 after reindexing it might be at 18, day 5 it's at 16, day 7 it's at 16 until it reaches the actual "real" rank. Both the delay and or the tempering of rank change would make it difficult more difficult to reverse engineer relative importance of on-page factors. OR, does Google realize there are large SEO firms doing SEO over several years for many sites that can examine aggregate data to determine these factors so Google doesn't delay (aka sandbox) or temper rank changes due to manual re-indexing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Semush0 -
Site still indexed after request 'change of address' search console
Hello, A couple of weeks ago we requested a change of address in Search console. The new, correct url is already indexed. Yet when we search the old url (with site:www.) we find that the old url is still indexed. Is there another way to remove old urls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversal0 -
Canonicals Passing Link Juice?
After having read this thread, the answer seems to be a tentative "Yes", but I am curious if I am doing this wrong, or causing myself problems, for a specific situation. We have a thread on the forums that has over 50,000 views for that thread alone. No doubt many people have linked to it across the web, and it ranks very well with Google. But we are dealing with a major problem in that the main portion of our site (home page and core content) which are the most important, aren't ranking in Google at all. A big part of this is because that part of the site hasn't been updated in years, whereas the forum is updated daily. By users. We've begun putting out quality content in our News Center lately, and hoping to start boosting its presence in Google. We have an article on the exact same topic that the forum thread covers. I was thinking of putting a canonical on that thread, pointing to the article, and hopefully pointing some very powerful link juice, popularity, and traffic into our news center articles. People can comment there as well if they like. Are there any potential downsides to doing this? My hope is that the forum thread loses rankings and the article takes on its rankings. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HLTalk1 -
Baffled by this site's inability to rank
Hi guys, I've been working on a site for quite a while and it has a really good link profile, excellent content, no errors or penalties (as far as I can tell) but for some reason it consistently ranks below a lot of thin poor quality websites with spammy EMDs and a few obviously paid links from old-skool business directories etc. It has a significantly higher DA and linking root domains that almost all of them. Also it just bounces around from #40 to #28 to#35 to #40 to #28 on a weekly basis for many of our primary keywords. There just seems to be no logic to this and it goes against everything I know and everything we're taught. (I should probably point out that I've been doing this quite a while and have a number of other sites ranking extremely well in quite a few different verticals), Has anyone ever experienced anything like this and what did you do? Before I throw in the towel it would be good to hear from others and try and understand why this happens and if there is anything else I can try to help my client and fix it. Many thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blaze-Communication0 -
Google's 'related:' operator
I have a quick question about Google's 'related:' operator when viewing search results. Is there reason why a website doesn't produce related/similar sites? For example, if I use the related: operator for my site, no results appear.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ecomteam_handiramp.com
https://www.google.com/#q=related:www.handiramp.com The site has been around since 1998. The site also has two good relevant DMOZ inbound links. Any suggestions on why this is and any way to fix it? Thank you.0 -
Site Structure: How do I deal with a great user experience that's not the best for Google's spiders?
We have ~3,000 photos that have all been tagged. We have a wonderful AJAXy interface for users where they can toggle all of these tags to find the exact set of photos they're looking for very quickly. We've also optimized a site structure for Google's benefit that gives each category a page. Each category page links to applicable album pages. Each album page links to individual photo pages. All pages have a good chunk of unique text. Now, for Google, the domain.com/photos index page should be a directory of sorts that links to each category page. Alternatively, the user would probably prefer the AJAXy interface. What is the best way to execute this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tatermarketing0 -
Getting out of Google's Penguin
Hi all, my site www.uniggardin.dk has lost major rankings on the searchengine google.dk. Went from rank #2-3 on important keywords to my site, and after the latest update most of my rankings have jumped to #12 - #20. This is so annoying, and I really have no idea what to do. Can it cause bad links to my site? In that case what will I have to do? Thanks in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Xpeztumdk
Christoffer0