Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does using a canonical with ?utm_source=gmb cause any issues?
-
All of our URLs in Google My Business are tagged with ?utm_source=gmb. This way when people click on it within a Google Map listing, knowledge graph, etc we know it came from there. I'm assuming using a canonical on all ?_utm_source _pages (we have others, including some in the index) won't cause any problems with this, correct? Since they're not technically traditional organic SERPs?
Dumb question I know, but better safe than sorry. Thanks.
-
You should use a canonical for pages with this utm - but the canonical is without utm. Otherwise you have a chance that you earn duplicate content (you mentioned utms in SERPs). It doesn't make sense to use a canonical with utm, because this would make organic users to utm=gmb users (if indexed and clicked).
And if you dont use canonical and link internally without utm? It happens, that people click on the found knowledge panel url and link to it - bamm! indexed and you cant trust your utm anymore and again, duplicate content.
Use canonical = yes
include utm = noyour pages: https://yourpage.com/subpagehttps://yourpage.com/subpage?utm_source=gmb should both have this canonical:
<link rel="canonical" href="yourpage.com/subpage"> ```
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
-
Duplicate content issue with ?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=
Hello,
Technical SEO | | Dinsh007
Recently, I was checking how my site content is getting indexed in Google and from today I noticed 2 links indexed on google for the same article: This is the proper link - https://techplusgame.com/hideo-kojima-not-interested-in-new-silent-hills-revival-insider-claims/ But why this URL was indexed, I don't know - https://techplusgame.com/hideo-kojima-not-interested-in-new-silent-hills-revival-insider-claims/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hideo-kojima-not-interested-in-new-silent-hills-revival-insider-claims Could you please tell me how to solve this issue? Thank you1 -
Discovered - currently not indexed issue
Hello all, We have a sitemap with URLs that have mostly user generated content. Profile Overview section. Where users write about their services and some other things. Out of 46K URLs, only 14K are valid according to search console and 32K URLs are excluded. Out of these 32K, 28K are "Discovered - currently not indexed". We can't really update these pages as they have user generated content. However we do want to leverage all these pages to help us in our SEO. So the question is how do we make all of these pages indexable? If anyone can help in the regard, please let me know. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | akashkandari0 -
Rel=canonical Weebly
My problem is with my website as it says I have duplicate page titles and contents because of a /index.html. It says the duplicate content is due to the fact that my homepage on my website is www.seacandytackle.com but it is also www.seacandytackle.com/index.html because I use weebly. How can I use the tag to fix this? It won't let me do a 301 redirect because it is a home page. How can I fix this? What code would I have to use and which url? Also it says that I have duplicate page content between http://www.seacandytackle.com/index.html and http://www.seacandytackle.comhttp://www.seacandytackle.com but I don't recall having any page that looks like http://www.seacandytackle.com http://www.seacandytackle.com from weebly. How can I fix this issue as well? Thank you for any help. Step by step implementation would be particularly helpful in using the rel= tags to fix these duplicate issues.
Technical SEO | | SeaCandyTackle0 -
Canonical Tag when using Ajax and PhantomJS
Hello, We have a site that is built using an AJAX application. We include the meta fragment tag in order to get a rendered page from PhantomJS. The URL that is rendered to google from PhantomJS then is www.oursite.com/?escaped_fragment= In the SERP google of course doesnt include the hashtag in the URL. So my question, with this setup, do i still need a canonical tag and if i do, would the canonical tag be the escaped fragment URL or the regular URL? Much Appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RevanaDigitalSEO0 -
PageSpeed Insights DNS Issue
Hi Anyone else having problems with Google's Pagespeed tool? I am trying to benchmark a couple of my sites but, according to Google, my sites are not loading. They will work when I run them through the test at one point but if I try again, say 15 mins later, they will present the following error message An error has occured DNS error while resolving DOMAIN. Check the spelling of the host, and ensure that the page is accessible from the public Internet. You may refresh to try again. If the problem persists, please visit the PageSpeed Insights mailing list for support. This isn't too much an issue for testing page speed but am concerned that if Google is getting this error on the speed test it will also get the error when trying to crawl and index the pages. I can confirm the sites are up and running. I the sites are pointed at the server via A-records and haven't been changed for many weeks so cannot be a dns updating issue. Am at a loss to explain. Any advice would be most welcome. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | daedriccarl0 -
Use webmaster tools "change of address" when doing rel=canonical
We are doing a "soft migration" of a website. (Actually it is a merger of two websites). We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days. These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site. Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's. Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0 -
Redirect non-www if using canonical url?
I have setup my website to use canonical urls on each page to point to the page i wish Google to refer to. At the moment, my non-www domain name is not redirected to www domain. Is this required if i have setup the canonical urls? This is the tag i have on my index.php page rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com.au" /> If i browse to http://mydomain.com.au should the link juice pass to http://www.armourbackups.com.au? Will this solve duplicate content problems? Thanks
Technical SEO | | blakadz0 -
Robots.txt and canonical tag
In the SEOmoz post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts, it's being said - If you have a robots.txt disallow in place for a page, the canonical tag will never be seen. Does it so happen that if a page is disallowed by robots.txt, spiders DO NOT read the html code ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050