Broken canonical link errors
-
Hello,
Several tools I'm using are returning errors due to "broken canonical links". However, I'm not too sure why is that.
Eg.
Page URL: domain.com/page.html?xxxx
Canonical link URL: domain.com/page.html
Returns an error.Any idea why? Am I doing it wrong?
Thanks,
G -
Great, thanks for your note Paul, I will filter through as you suggest!
-
I would us a different
rel="canonical" only url for the canonical & kee the microdata link as just a link.
I agree it is probably Just the tool but from what I can see mixing microdata & the canonical is not the best way to go.
<link rel="canonical" href="http: example.com="" "=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:>
you want a free way to test up to 500 pages https://screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ like Paul said any tool can be wrong but it looks like you should not mix the canonical something the end Users can click on
tom
-
Your understanding of canonical tags is correct, GhillC.
If Tools are showing errors for those canonical tags you've listed, then the tools are wrong.
As long as the protocol and subdomain prefix (or not) exactly match and the only difference is the exclusion of the parameters (the "?" and the stuff after it) then the canonicals are correct.
Any tool's reports have to be filtered through your own understanding and knowledge. They often get things wrong. That's on eof the key differences between experienced SEOs and less-experienced. They kow when to question what an automated tool is telling them. So good on ya for questioning the results!
Paul
-
Thanks both.
Though I do believe that I get a good enough understanding of the canonical tag structure.
What I don't understand is why some SEO tools are returning an error with few of these tags.Here is the page URL:
https://www.domain.com/ae/products/shopby/product-type-accessories.html?___store=en_aeAnd here is the canonical tag that returns the error:
As per your comment, I want the URL without the query string to rank and the traffic associated to the URL above to benefit "accessories.html".
At first I thought it was due to "itemprop" which technically should not be combined with a rel attribute (source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31621308/itemprop-and-rel-attributes-on-same-element)
But since all the pages of the website I'm working on contains canonical tags with both elements and only a handful of them returns a canonical tag error, I guess it comes from something else. -
If you need anyone to back up what Roman said he's exactly right.
You need to add the canonical to your site so it is self-referencing I would not add it to any URLs that have parameters/query strings or any URL that you want to be in Google's index.
In your example you show the same page twice I added https:// just to make it a full URL for the example and please do that when you add the canonical's
With the rel canonical, you're telling Google that your parameter is not something you want to rank for
You want https://domain.com/page.html to rank
** not**
**Page URL: https://domain.com/page.html?xxxx **
So as Roman said you would add a rel canonical like this below. Please keep in mind when you add these you must add HTTP or HTTPS depending on what your site is up for as well as www. or non-www. & always use absolute URLs
For example, search crawlers might be able to reach your homepage in all of the following ways:
Cite: https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
More references
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
- https://moz.com/blog/rel-canonical
- https://varvy.com/rel/canonical.html
I hope that helps,
Tom
-
A canonical tag (aka "rel canonical") is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or "duplicate" content appearing on multiple URLs. Practically speaking, the canonical tag tells search engines which version of a URL you want to appear in search results.
So if you have a page such as
www.mywesbite.com you should have a canonical tag on that page like this one
on your headerSo you should check your source code to check if the URL is ok or it's missing
These are some links you should read
Hope this information will answer your question
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
-
Increase in Crawl Errors
I had a problem with a lot of crawl errors (on Google Search Console) a while back, due to the removal of a shopping cart. I thought I'd dealt with this & Google seemed to agree (see attached pic), but now they're all back with a vengeance! The crawl errors are all the old shop pages that I thought I'd made clear weren't there anymore. The sitemaps (using Yoast on Wordpress to generate these) all updated 16 Aug but the increase didn't happen till 18-20. How do I make it clear to Google that these pages are gone forever? Screen-Shot-2016-08-22-at-10.19.05.png
Technical SEO | | abisti20 -
Invert canonicals?
Hi, We have 2 sites, site A and site B. For now, some of our articles are duplicated on site B with rel canonicals towards site A. Starting now, Site B will be the main site for this category, we'll only post the content on this site. We will keep the old content on site A. But what do you think will happen if we invert the canonicals for the old articles? They would go towards site B. Would google eventually update its index, a bit like it would do for a redirect? Thanks !
Technical SEO | | AdrienLargus0 -
What do I do with these back links?
In the last two weeks, I've got 10 pingbacks from this http://caraccidentlawyer.cc/coroner-ids-berkeley-bodies-who-were-killed-in-recent-car-accident/ and sites like it. The featured attorney is a competitor of ours and, since the links aren't sex/drugs/rock&roll related, (and he's linked too) I doubt this is a negative SEO campaign, but I want it to stop. These blogs are basically pure spam. Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
404 Error
Hello, Seomoz flagged a url as having a 404 client error. The reason the link doesn't return a proper content page is because the url name was changed. What should we do? Will this error disappear when Google indexes our site again? Or is there some way to manually eliminate it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OTSEO0 -
4XX (Client Error)
How much will 5 of these errors hurt my search engine ranking for the site itself (ie: the domain) if these 5 pages have this error.
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
What is link juice - and how do I utilise it?
Apologies for the very basic question - I am trying to determine exactly what link juice is. Every article I seem to find assumes that you already know what link juice is. From what I can tell it is how your internal links push around from your homepage and how they flow through your site. I don't understand how to optimize this and how to improve it throughout my site - or what the opportunities are. I'll attach an image of my site link numbers compared to a few rivals (names removed) to illustrate the difference - not vs the first column but certainly the other two. Can someone shed some light on Link Juice for me and point me in the right direction? Thanks. Oy2c5.png
Technical SEO | | Benj250 -
Nofollow internal links
Hi, we have problems with having too many links on page. Our website has a menu with 3 level sub-navigation drop down for categories which we want to maintain, for easy-navigation for the users. http://www.redwrappings.com.au/ After reading this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru, and some other articles, we came up with a solution. We can easily reduce the number of links per page by putting 'nofollow' on our categories links menu dropdown and create a separate 'landing page' that contains links to these categories (and allow 'follow' links for robots). Is it wise to do this? Or any better, easy solution that you can suggest? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Essentia1