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
-
Links
Hi 64% of our links come from a .com website and only 30% from .co.uk. We only do business in the UK should I continue with the .com links as they are easier to source. Does this hurt my SEO efforts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Which one is better?
We are creating a new website and got stuck while deciding the URL structure. Our concern is which url is better in terms of SEO i.e. pune.fabogo.com/spa or fabogo.com/pune/spa and why. Also which one would rank faster if someone searches for spas in pune if both pages are same.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabogo_marketing0 -
Case Sensitive URLs, Duplicate Content & Link Rel Canonical
I have a site where URLs are case sensitive. In some cases the lowercase URL is being indexed and in others the mixed case URL is being indexed. This is leading to duplicate content issues on the site. The site is using link rel canonical to specify a preferred URL in some cases however there is no consistency whether the URLs are lowercase or mixed case. On some pages the link rel canonical tag points to the lowercase URL, on others it points to the mixed case URL. Ideally I'd like to update all link rel canonical tags and internal links throughout the site to use the lowercase URL however I'm apprehensive! My question is as follows: If I where to specify the lowercase URL across the site in addition to updating internal links to use lowercase URLs, could this have a negative impact where the mixed case URL is the one currently indexed? Hope this makes sense! Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allianzireland0 -
Spammy sites that link to a site
Hello, What is the best and quickest way to identify spammy sites that link to a website, and then remove them ( google disavow?) Thank you dear Moz, community - I appreciate your help 🙂 Sincerely, Vijay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vijayvasu0 -
Which Domain is better
Which domain is better for SEO. vehiclewrapslasvegasnv.com Or vehicle-wraps-lasvegas-nv.com Thanks in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite0 -
Links in body text
From a purely SEO /link juice perspective, is there any benefit to linking from body text to a page that is in a pervasive primary navigation? The primary nav puts a link at the top of the HTML. With the tests done by members of this site, the "first link counts" rule negates the link juice value of a link in the body text if there is already a link in the nav. Now I've also seen the data on using hash tags to get a second or third link, but ignoring that, it would seem that links in the body text to pages in the nav have zero effect. This brings me to another question - block level navigation. If anchor text links pass more juice than links in the top navigation, why would you put your most coveted target pages in the top nav? You would be better off building links in the content, which would create a poor user experience. To me, the theory that anchor text links in the body pass more juice than links in the primary nav doesn't make any sense. Can someone please explain this to me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Link masking in WordPress
in Wordpress, I want to block Google from crawling my site using the primary navigation. I want to use anchor text links in the body and custom menus in the sidebar to make maximum benefit of the "first link counts" rule. In short, I want to obfuscate all of the links in my primary navigation without using the dreaded nofollow. I do not want to block other links to the pages - body text, custom menus, etc. . This would be site wide. I'd rather not use Ajax or any type of programming unless it's part of a plugin. Can anyone make a simple, Google-friendly suggestion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Canonical Meta Tag
Can someone explain how this works and how necessary is it? For example, I have a new client, who is ranking WITHOUT the www in their domain, but they have a good deal of backlinks already that have www in it. When I set up google webmaster tools I made 2, one for WWW and one for WITHOUT and there are diffenet numbers of backlinks for each. I have no idea what do about this or if I should even do anything. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheGrid0