Added a canonical ref tag and SERPs tanked, should we change it back?
-
My client's CMS uses an internal linking structure that includes index.php at the end of the URLs. The site also works using SEO-friendly URLs without index.php, so the SEO tool identified a duplicate content issue.
Their marketing team thought the pages with index.php would have better link equity and rank higher, so they added a canonical ref tag, making the index.php version of the pages the canonical page. As a result, the site dropped in the rankings by a LOT and has not recovered in the last 3-months.
It appears that Google had automatically selected the SEO-friendly URLs as the canonical page, and by switching, it re-indexed the entire site.
The question we have is, should they change it back? Or will this cause the site to be reindexed again, resulting in an even lower ranking?
-
Yes, I think you should change it back. Because canonical tags affect SEO from two points of view. For once, they directly influence how search results are displayed. The SEO tool found a duplicate content problem because the website also functions with SEO-friendly URLs that do not include index.php. Canonical tags have multiple benefits only when they are implemented correctly. So, please check your ref tag again and change it accordingly.
-
What is the technical limitation? consider 301 redirects from index.php to seo-friendly urls
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
-
Unsolved Moz Pro crawl signaling missing canonical which are not?
Hi,
Moz Pro | | rolandvintners
I'm trying MozPro considering using it.
One of the tool which is appealing is the crawl and insights.
After quick use, I really question many of the alerts, for instance, I got a "missing canonical tag" on this url: https://vintners.co/wine/grawu_gto#2020 but when I check my markup, there's clearly a canonical tag: <link rel="canonical" href="https://vintners.co/wine/grawu_gto"> Anybody can explain?
I asked Moz Pro staff when being onboarded but didn't get an answer...
Honestly, I'm questioning the value of these crawls, or may be I miss something?0 -
"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to Google Ads costs
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
Paid Search Marketing | | Alex_Pisa
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Naturally this si reflected in ""Duplicate without user-selected canonical” . Issue
We create the same ad in Google Ads for 2 domains. So the content is mostly identical, ads are identical, target URLs differ only in domain. Yet Google Ads “Quality score” is different (10/10 vs. 6/10) and “Landing page experience” is very different (Above average vs. Average). Some members of our team think lower “Landing page experience” increases the Google Ads costs, which I personally don't believe, but I want to double check. Question: Can “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” issue decrease the “Landing page experience” rating and as result can it cause higher Google ads costs? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.0 -
Google adding text to SERP title which isn't relevant
Hi guys, I have a site with around 300 articles on it and these articles came from three old domains which were migrated during a Wordpress domain migration almost four months back. There The problem I'm having is that for quite a lot of the articles in the SERP, Google is adding '- Maine Coons' to the end of the title. One of our old domains was related to this breed of cat so at least in Google's eyes it must have something to do with this I guess. I've attached a screenshot that shows one such example. What's odd is a lot of the new content that has been created also has this suffix added and it doesn't show in any other search engine. So, it doesn't appear in other search engines and it's not coming from the article itself (proved also via developer tools inspecting the code). So, Google is adding it but as you can see in this example (there are many more) it has absolutely no relevance to the post. Has anyone seen this behavior or have any idea how to fix it? I've tried all kinds of things and have even hired SEO 'experts' that haven't been able to see any problems. Any clues? Thanks, Matt K71Y3P9
Technical SEO | | mattpettitt0 -
Can ALT tags for a Gallery be identical for all images with just the no changes?
Can ALT tags for a Gallery be identical for all images with just the no changes? Will that create any issues?
Technical SEO | | AlexisWithers1 -
Permalink change
what will happen with the old permalink when we change the title name to a new title name? would the old permalink disappear after a while or i have to manually delete them? thank you
Technical SEO | | gergi0 -
Finding Broken Back Links
Hello there I am new here but really want to mend my broken website by myself as I enjoy a challenge! I used to have great rankings but have moved websites a few times (same domain) and the last move was to wordpress. I now have loads of broken links in the SERPS and wondered if there was an easy way to flush google of them as they are getting lots of 404 errors? They really are too many to do a 301 on (I have done the main pages) Also how do I do a crawl of my website for any internal broken links? Does SEOmoz have something or is there an external program you would recommend? Thanks Victoria
Technical SEO | | vcasebourne0 -
Canoical tags how do i use them
Hi i have this coming up on the report for my url www.in2town.co.uk but i am not sure how to use the canonical tag. I am using joomla and would be grateful if anyone could please give me advice on how to use this. Canonical URL Tag Usage Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt> <dd>0</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.</dd> <dd>many thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
</dd> </dl>0 -
Canonical Issues with Wordpress
Hi all, I have just started using Wordpress SEO by Yoast and still having a hard time correcting my Canonical issues for all posts with a .html at the end. The pluggin allows you to add a '/' to the end for canonical issues, but just for pages, not posts. How best in Wordpress to make my post change from .html/ to .html. I really don't want to go to the hassle to make each URL a new 301 redirect in my .htaccess. I hate the .html, but if they are going to stay, how can I make sure I get the .html/ link juice back to them. Many thanks!
Technical SEO | | RunningInTheRain0