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Hey Dirk

I think that's the crux eh - keeping the 1 to 1 ratio. Makes it a bloody cinch to do too.

Still doesn't quite sit right somehow to have canonicals on top of canonicials mind you but sod it - works for me.

Cheers Dirk.

Alex.

I've a question about setting up the rel=alternate & rel=canonical tags between desktop and a dedicated mobile site in specific regards to paginated pages.

On the desktop and mobile site, all paginated pages have the rel=canonical set towards a single URL as per usual.

On the desktop site though, should the rel=alternate be to the relevant paginated page on the mobile site (ie a different rel=alternate on every paginated page) or to a single URL just as it is vice versa.

Cheers chaps.

Hi Alex

Ah, crisis of confidence again!

I didn't think that this was the case though for the index page. I thought normalisation meant they were treated as the same page. As Marcus said, I can't 301 the example.com page to example.com/ .

Hi Marcus

I agree out outside of the home page it's an issue (& good answer btw) but it's only the index page I'm worried about.

It's that crisis of confidence that I'm sure we all get from time to time as to whether something rather simple/fundamental is actually as we believe it to be.

I've been re-reading this document http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986 and I think it's section 3.2.6 (if I remember right) that covers normalization of the root URL's.

I do not think I have a problem here, but a second opinion would be welcomed...

I have a site which has a the rel=canonical tag with the trailing slash displayed. ie www.example.com/

The sitemap has it without the trailing slash. www.example.com

Google has it's cached copy with the trailing slash but the browser displays it without.

I want to say it's perfectly fine (for the home page) as I tend to think they are treated (with/without trailing slashes) as the same canonical URL.

Hi Aidan

I'm getting a similar problem on a site I'm working on. The on page rank checker "can't reach the page". I've checked everything obvious (at least I think I have!)

May I ask how you eventually resolved it?

Thanks Aidan

This is a fairly technical question... I have a site which has 4 subdomains, all targeting a specific language. The brand owners don't want German users to see the prices on the French sub domain and are forcing users into a re-direct to the relevant subddomain, based on their IP address. If a user comes from a different country, (ie the US) they are forced on the UK sub domain. The client is insistent on keeping control of who sees what (I know that's a debate in it's own right), but these re-directs we're implementing to make that happen, are really making it difficult to get all the subdomains indexed as I think googlebot is also getting re-directed and is failing to do it's job. Is there are a way of re-directing users, but not Googlebot?

Thanks Matt.

I've come to the same conclusion - to be honest, it's pretty obvious when you get your head around it. My problem is an incredibly difficult client (who doesn't speak English well) muddying the waters so much - it's nice to hear thoughts by someone who has a much clearer head than I have.

I can't do anything about the sub domains now but I agree folder are a nicer solution: That's another story though.

I'm pushing for a javascript based language pop up option based on non-matching IP's to the current sub domain.

I could talk about this one for hours - I can feel the grey hair forming every day with this project!

Cheers Matt.

I am working on an e-commerce store. There are 4 subdomains for 4 seperate languages. ie uk.business.com, fr.business.com etc

The client is asking that any French speaker (French IP address) is only shown the FR subdomain and so on for all languages.

Is this the best way of doing things, or am I better off without the re-direct.

Thanks Guys

I've got some developers to help me with the tech side so they'll be using the servers etc that they're used too.

Just wanted to check I wasn't dropping a massively obvious clanger on the SEO side.

Cheers for your help.

Alex.

I've a question about setting up the rel=alternate & rel=canonical tags between desktop and a dedicated mobile site in specific regards to paginated pages.

On the desktop and mobile site, all paginated pages have the rel=canonical set towards a single URL as per usual.

On the desktop site though, should the rel=alternate be to the relevant paginated page on the mobile site (ie a different rel=alternate on every paginated page) or to a single URL just as it is vice versa.

Cheers chaps.