How can you manually diagnose the canonical problem
-
Good Monrning from snow dusted minus 3 degrees C Wetherby UK...
Is there a quick way to diagnose wether or not a website has a canonical problem or not?
So far Ive been doing this for example: Typing a full web address then one without the w's and seeing if a 301 redirect has been set up. But I'm not confident this is the best way to diagnose if there is a canonical problem with a site.
I would like to ad that I want to see if a canonical problem exists with any site and webmanster tools is not available.
Any insights welcome
-
A suggestion that all major search engines obey. We used it massively and it is 100% listened to by search engines.
-
Keep in mind that rel=canonical is more of a suggestion than a command.
-
Hey Nightwing
I think you need to be careful here. A 301 is a re-direct whereas a canonical is telling Google, Bing etc to treat this page as a duplicate and not index it.
To quote Google: "A canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content."
See Matt Cutts and all his beauty explain here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
A canonical won't re-direct the page like a 301, the page still exists, it's just that search engines will remove it from SERPs.
As long as the code is all set up right, the only way to check for a canonical is working is to review the code.....and it should also drop out of the SERPs too.
Hope this helps.
Stay warm
-
Morning Nightwing
We also had some snow here in B'ham but it's almost gone now.
If you want to be sure then simply implement 301 redirects. When doing a manual check, like the one you've mentioned above, you can look at your SEOmoz toolbar and you will often see a difference in PA of different versions of your page.
-
Use screaming frog.
Using the free version it will crawl up to 500 pages. For each page it will then provide the status code i.e. 302, 400 e.t.c That way you can determine if there are any page issues.
In general, Google Webmaster Tools is your best bet of showing a sites cannonical issues. Otherwise you can also try SEOMoz's pro tools ;0
Hope this helps.
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
-
My wordpress website is facing indexing problems
Hello, I am facing indexing issues on one of my which is about budget bushcraft knife, Four months have been passed I built my site and published almost 8 articles so far. But i am worried no single keyword ranked on google till yet as I checked through MOZ site explorer. Can anyone guide me on what should I need to do now? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Ewerurt0 -
What Can I Do To Improve The SEO of My Site?
We have a website that is ranking okay but we can't seem to get past #6 or #7 for a specific national keyword, "self storage software". We are working on a more effective back-linking strategy right now, but we really are having a hard time identifying steps to take besides that. If anyone can help me out and give me some suggestions I would be very appreciative. Maybe even seeing a competitive analysis from someone else would help catch something that I am not seeing. Website is www.storageunitsoftware.com Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | kenturley0 -
Does Google read dynamic canonical tags?
Does Google recognize rel=canonical tag if loaded dynamically via javascript? Here's what we're using to load: <script> //Inject canonical link into page head if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname1") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/kapiolani", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname2") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/straub", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname3") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/pali-momi", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname4") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/wilcox", ""); } if (canonicalLink != window.location.href) { var link = document.createElement('link'); link.rel = 'canonical'; link.href = canonicalLink; document.head.appendChild(link); } script>
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
How best to fix 301 redirect problems
Hi all Wondering if anyone could help out with this one. Roger Bot crawler has just performed it's weekly error crawl on my site and I appear to have 18,613 temp redirect problems!! Rather, the same 1 problem 18,613 times. My site is a magento store and the errors it is giving me is due to the wishlist feature on the site. For example, it is trying to crawl links such as index.php/wishlist/index/add/product/29416/form_key/DBDSNAJOfP2YGgfW (which would normally add the item to one's wishlist). However, because Roger isn't logged into the website it means that all these requests are being sent to the login url with the page title of Please Enable Cookies. Would the best way to fix this be to enable wishlists for guests? I would rather not do that but cannot think of another way of fixing it. Any other Magento people come across this issue? Thanks, Carl
Technical SEO | | daedriccarl0 -
Can I have an H1 tag below an H2?
Quick question for you all - Is there an issue with me having an H1 tag physically below an H2 tag on a web page??
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
How to fix rel canonical tags?
Hello there, I am trying to fix the issues with my campaign and I am trying to fix Rel canonical issues. I tried to read a few blogs and other sources which talked about the Rel canonical but I am not able to understand why is Rel Canonical happening? I understand that http://elegancealways.com is not the same as http://elegancealways.com/about-us/ but then I cannot change the link as the link is correct. I read about 301 and 302 redirects. I do not understand that which link is correct then? The errors SEO MOZ is showing is what I am not able to understand as these links are correct. I need help here!! Thanks Vineeta qTc2a2H.png
Technical SEO | | vineeta0 -
Rel canonical question
Hi, I have an e-commerce site hosted on Volusion currently the rel canonical link for the homepage points to www.store.com/default.asp. I spoke with the Volusion support people and they told me that whether the canonical link points to store.com/default.asp or store.com does not really matter as long as there is a canonical version. I thought this sounded odd, so looked at other websites hosted on volusion and some sites canonicalize to default.asp and others .com. (volusion.com canonicalizes to .com fwiw). The question is...I have a majority of my external links going to www.store.com , and since that page has default.asp as it canonical version, am I losing link juice from those incoming links? If so, should I change the canonical link? If I do what are the potential issues/penalties? Hopefully this question makes sense and thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | IOSC0 -
Rel = prev next AND canonical?
I have product category pages that correctly have the prev next but the moz crawl is giving me duplicate content errors. I would not think I also need to have canonical - but do I ?
Technical SEO | | JohnBerger0