Canonicals for Real Estate
-
A real estate site has a landing page for a particular zip code:
On this page, there are links which add arguments to the URL, resulting in structures like this:
site.com/zip/99999?maxprice=1000000&maxbeds=3
My question is on using a canonical URL for the pages with arguments. These pages may have lots of duplicate content, so should I direct search engines back to the base URL for the search? (site.com/zip/99999)
A side note is that these pages with arguments could have no listings returned (no listings found) or could come back with listings (then it wouldn't be duplicate), but that can change on a day to day basis.
-
This is what my intuition was telling me too. I think the only thing that made me re-consider was that I started receiving traffic for those links with arguments.
Thanks for your input!
-
I would stick to optimising the main site.com/zip/99999 type pages
As the other ones have no particularly unique content and the fact that they arent permanent pages (eg when no listings) means you will never be able build links into them
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
-
Duplicate content homepage - Google canonical 'N/A'?
Hi, I redesigned a clients website and launched it two weeks ago. Since then, I have 301 redirected all old URL's in Google's search results to their counterparts on the new site. However, none of the new pages are appearing in the search results and even the homepage has disappeared. Only old site links are appearing (even though the old website has been taken down ) and in GSC, it's stating that: Page is not indexed: Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user However, when I try to understand how to fix the issue and see which URL it is claiming to be a duplicate of, it says: Google-selected canonical: N/A It says that the last crawl was only yesterday - how can I possibly fix it without knowing which page it says it's a duplicate of? Is this something that just takes time, or is it permanent? I would understand if it was just Google taking time to crawl the pages and index but it seems to be adamant it's not going to show any of them at all. 55.png
Technical SEO | | goliath910 -
301 Redirect Url Within a Canonical Tag
So this might sounds like a silly question... A client of mine has a duplicate content issue which will be fixed using canonical tags. We are also providing them with an updated URL structure meaning rwe will be having to do lots of 301 redirects. The URL structure is a much larger task that than the duplicate content so i planned to set up the canonicals first. Then it occurred to me id be updating the canonical tags with the urls from the old structure which brings me to my question. Will the canonical tags with the old urls redirect credit to the new urls with the 301? Or should i just wait until we have the new url structure in place and use these new urls in the canonicals? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | NickG-1230 -
Invert canonicals?
Hi, We have 2 sites, site A and site B. For now, some of our articles are duplicated on site B with rel canonicals towards site A. Starting now, Site B will be the main site for this category, we'll only post the content on this site. We will keep the old content on site A. But what do you think will happen if we invert the canonicals for the old articles? They would go towards site B. Would google eventually update its index, a bit like it would do for a redirect? Thanks !
Technical SEO | | AdrienLargus0 -
Rel Canonical for the Same Page
Hi, I was looking in my one of my moz accounts and under analyz page under notices is a message that says: Rel Canonical Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical. I checked an notice that I do have a rel='canonical' href='http://www.example.com' /> from the home page of http://www.example.com. I guess my question is. Does having a Rel Canonical going to the same page hurt my SEO? I'm not sure why it is there but wanted to make sure I address this correctly. I was under the impression you use Rel Canonical for duplicate or similar pages and you want to let Google know what page to show. But since I've made this mistake to where I am saying to show the home page if you find a similar home page, should I just delete the Rel Canonical. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | ErrickG
Errick0 -
Why put rel=canonical to the same url ?
Hi all. I've heard that it's good to put the link rel canonical in your header even when there is no other important or prefered version of that url. If you take a look at moz.com and see the code, you'll see that they put the <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://moz.com" /> ... pointing at the same url ! But if you go to http://moz.com/products/pricing for example, they have no canonical there ! WHY ? Thanks in advance !
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
Rel="canonical" What if there is no header??
Hi Everyone! Thanks to moz.com, I just found out that we have a duplicate content issue: mywebsite.com and mywebsite.com/index.php have the same content. I would like to make mywebsite.com the main one because it already has a few links and a better page rank. I know how to do a 301 redirect (already have one for www.mywebsite.com) but I am aware that a 301 redirect for my index file would create a loop issue. I have read the article about redirecting without creating a loop (http://moz.com/blog/apache-redirect-an-index-file-to-your-domain-without-looping) but quite frankly I don't even have a clue what he's trying to tell me (e.g. "Create an apache DirectoryIndex directive for your document root." What????!)… So I figured a rel="canonical" tag for my index file would be easier and fix the problem, too (right??) In every "How to" description they always say you have to put the rel="canonical" tag in the header of your duplicate content file. But: My index.php has no header (or nothing that looks like a header to me)! This is what it looks like: foreach($_GET as $key => $value)
Technical SEO | | momof4
{
$$key = $value;
}
foreach($_POST as $key => $value)
{
$$key = $value;
}
$page_title="my title";
$page_description="my description";
$page_keywords="keywords";
//echo $link;
//exit;
if (!isset($link)):
$page_content="homepage.php";
else:
if ($link=="services"):
$page_content="services.php";
$page_title=" my title for services page";
$page_description="description for services.";
endif;
… ect. for the other pages So where do I put the rel=canonical tag? Or is there another solution for the whole problem? Like delete the whole index file (lol) Thanks in advance for any answers!0 -
After I 301 redirect duplicate pages to my rel=canonical page, do I need to add any tags or code to the non canonical pages?
I have many duplicate pages. Some pages have 2-3 duplicates. Most of which have Uppercase and Lowercase paths (generated by Microsoft IIS). Does this implementation of 301 and rel=canonical suffice? Or is there more I could do to optimize the passing of duplicate page link juice to the canonical. THANK YOU!
Technical SEO | | PFTools0 -
Home page canonical issues
I think I’ve got a canonical issue with a client’s site that I’m having problems with I’ve noticed in their analytics that they receive traffic from themselves. I’ve used ‘ rel canonical’ throughout the site to avoid any dup issues and I have 301’ed every other variation of the home page I can think of. I don’t have full access to the back end of the host to control any of the iis as it’s an asp site. They seem to be getting traffic from their site under the URL of, example.com I’ve 301 redirected www.example.com/home.asp www.example.com/default.asp www.example.com/index.asp to www.example.com And 'rel canonical' the home page to www.example.com but still seem to be having the same problem any ideas? Thanks
Technical SEO | | FarkyRafiq0