How to Specify Canonical Link Element for Better Performing?
-
I read Google webmaster centeral's blog post and help article about rel="canonical" which was compiled by Matt.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
I am working on eCommerce website and found too many duplicate pages with same product as follow.
1. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_62_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
2. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
3. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_55_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
4. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_57_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
5. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
6. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_56_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
7. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_63_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
8. www.lampslightingandmore.com/63_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
9. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
10. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_58_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
11. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_59_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.htmlI have consider 1st product as a primary product and set following rel canonical tag on remaining products. Primary product also contain following rel canonical tag.
This was my experience to set canonical tag. But, I am not able to see any improvement on crawling. I was in that assumption due to duplication Google did not crawled my pages. But, Now what is problem with it? How can I fix it and specify proper canonical link element for better crawling?
Note: I am working to compile unique content on each product pages and make it live very soon.
-
I got it.... I am going to implement as previous one. Thanks for your prompt reply.
-
Hi!
My suggestion is to never eliminate the canonical tag, as it could also prevent scrapers' stealing content without attribution.
-
@Gianluca Fiorelli
I have added following Meta in all duplicate products [2 to 11] exclude primary product [1].
I have marked this question as answered but raise one question after observe source code of all product pages. I have implemented following canonical on all duplicate product pages pointing to unique product.
So, now is it require on duplicate pages? Can I remove it from entire website? Because, duplication will not occur due to prevention of indexing for all duplicate products.
Note: I am still surviving from crawling issue. My crawling is still very slow and only 113 pages were indexed by Google.
-
It's manufacturer part number.
-
From what I see, yes.
Just a question: what em89917-x2. in this product URL
http://www.spiderofficechairs.com/officechairs-officestarproducts-em89917-x2.html
corresponds to? product's id?
-
Are you talking like this?
I have fix URL structure for all products and manipulate that product in multiple categories.
There will no change in URL structure.
-
Mmm, that could be an idea, but maybe it not the best one. From what I see, the reason of the duplicated content is because the same product is listed in different categories and sub-categories. What I would do is to strip the category id in the URLs, and - when it comes to products - have this kind of URL: www.domain.com/product This way, no matter the category, there will be always just one product URL and no duplication issue. Done that, I would 301 all the old duplicates urls.
-
You are 100% right. I am not able to see significant changes in crawling after 4 days of implementation. I am thinking to add meta for robots with noindex, nofollow specification on all duplicate product page.
Google will crawl and index only primary product. [That's unique one.] What you think about it? Will it work for me or not?
-
No, I don't want to index duplicate pages. And, not able to define unique attributes on all duplicate pages. Can you suggest me any alternative?
-
Maybe I wrongly understood you, so I beg you pardon if my answers is not useful.
From what I understood you have ton of duplicate product pages. So you decided you use rel="canonical" in order to say to the SE that all the 99 product pages of 100 are dupes of the first one.
That means that you are suggesting (rel="canonical" is not a command, but a strong indication/suggestion to the search engines) to not consider for indexing those 99, but just the 1 canonical page.
Therefore, if your problem is to have SE crawling all your pages, and you consider those product pages as to be crawled, therefore canonical tag is not the right thing to do.
If you want all those duplicates to be indexed... then you should have to differentiate all of them, making them unique, as you write in your note.
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
-
Breadcrumbs or contextual links ?
Hi, I have breadcrumbs on my site but wondering if in addition to those I should also add contextual links linking to the same pages ? Or is it necessary to duplicate ? The reason i would be doing this is because contextual links/ editorial is what google likes and I am not sure breadcrumbs counts as much. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
What link would be better?
Hi Guys, Just wondering what would be better in this instance: finding an old post (with good authority) and getting a link from that old article or creating a brand new article and adding the link to that. Finding an old post (with good authority) and getting a link from that old article Creating a brand new article and adding the link to that. Both naturally link out to the page you want a link too. To me, number 1 as the page already has authority but then again number 2 since Google might place some weight to recency. Any thoughts? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts140 -
Any idea why Google Search Console stopped showing "Internal Links" and "Links to your site"
Our default eCommerce property (https://www.pure-elegance.com) used to show several dozen External Links and several thousand Internal Links on Google Search Console. As of this Friday both those links are showing "No Data Available". I checked other related properties (https://pure-elegance.com, http:pure-elegance.com and http://www.pure-elegance.com) and all of them are showing the same. Our other statistics (like Search Analytics etc.) remain unchanged. Any idea what might have caused this and how to resolve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SudipG0 -
Internal nofollow links
Hello, We have a blog and at the end each blog post (and from the sidebar) we link to one main product page (tagged with a particular query string). Now Google will see from every blog post all of these internal links pointing back to this page. Do you think this would cause a problem and that these links should be nofollowed? I think Google will kind of detect that these is kind of a "navigation" as the code will be the same across all webpages. Most of all, doing them nofollow I think it is worse because it may trigger some sort of pagerank sculpting algo filter, if it still exists. Thanks, Conrad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conalt0 -
Canonical Issue with urls
I saw some urls of my site showing duplicate page content, duplicate page title issues on crawl reports. So I have set canonical url for every urls , that has dupicate content / page title. But still SeoMoz crawl test is showing issue. I am giving here one url with issue. The below given urls shown duplicate content and duplicate page title with some other urls all are given below. Checked URL http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7635 dup page content http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622&category_id=270&colors=Black_Tones&click=colors&ci=1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trixmediainc
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 dup page Title http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636&category_id=270&sizes=12x15,12x18&click=sizes
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622&category_id=270&colors=Black_Tones&click=colors&ci=1
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 But I have set canonical url for all these urls already , that is :- http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 This should actually solve the problem right ? Search engine should identify the canonical url as original url and only should consider that. Thanks0 -
Mobile version of my sites: What is better?
What is the best approach to make my sites ready for mobile, in terms of SEO ? Is it better to create a subdomain called "m.mydomain.com" and redirect mobile users to that domain with a lite version of my sites? Or is it better to just keep the same domain as for my desktop version "mydomain.com" and use a WordPress theme that fits for all gadgets, for example Twenty Fourteen WordPress Theme, that adapts to each device? I see that most big sites use a "m.mydomain.com" subdomain for the mobile version, however, I don't see any sense in creating a subdomain of the site, when you can just use the WP adapting theme in the main domain. Any insight please? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BloggerGuy0 -
Best internal linking structure?
We are considering implementing a site-wide contextual linking structure. Does anyone have some good guidelines / blog posts on this topic? Our site is quite (over 1 million pages), so the contextual linking would be automated, but we need to define a set of rules. Basically, if we have a great page on 'healthy recipes,' should we make every instance of the word 'healthy recipes' link back to that page, or should we limit it to a certain number of pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Dark Matter Links
From 2007 - 2004 I worked for Sprint in several positions with my last one being a Corporate Account Manager for fortune 1000 customers. In 2004 I left Sprint after the Nextel merger and created an eCommerce site called thesprintstore.net as a Sprint Nextel preferred partner. I used my inner working knowledge of Sprint to my wonderful advantage and began making 3x my original salary. My desire for more business turned to greed and I began leaking information that consumers loved i.e. phone release dates, price points, warehouse stock levels and tricks of the trade. This garnered me thousands of links from big sites (had no idea at the time) and eventually my site was issued a Cease and Desist order from Sprint's Corporate Headquarters. I recently realized one evening that I had a GEM of a domain with powerful backlinks that I could redirect to my current site TECHeGO.com [staff removed hyperlink]. (Some of the back links are from Engaget, Engaget Mobile, Rimmarkable and even one from Sprint.) The redirection has been in place for months now and I have confirmed that all that sweet Link Nectar is flowing through! I have found it interesting, however, that my back link and referral domain count have never increased leading me to believe that in doing a 301 Redirect existing links become what can only be described as 'Dark Matter Links' i.e. the links are there, simply invisible. Dark Matter Definition: dark matter is matter that is inferred to exist from gravitational effects on visible matter and background radiation, but is undetectable by emitted or scatteredelectromagnetic radiation. Dark Matter Links: dark matter links are visible links that have passed through a 301 redirect which are now inferred to exist but are no longer visible by crawlers? Is there a better definition that could be applied to the term 'Dark Matter Links'?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TECHeGO1