Canonical links apparently not used by google
-
hi,
I do have an ecommerce website (www.soundcreation.ro) which in the last 3 months had a drop in the SERP. Started to look around in GWT what is happening. Google is reporting a lot of duplicate meta-tags (and meta-titles problem). But 99% of them had already canonical links setted. I tried to optimize my product listings with the new "prev", "next" tags and introduced also the "view-all" canonical link to help Google identify the appropiate product listing pages.
SeoMoz is not reporting thos duplicate meta issues.
Here is an example of the same page with different links, but with the same common canonical and reported by GWT "duplicate title tag":
http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10-pageall/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10_999/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-electro-acustice-cid10_1510/What could be the issue?- only that gwt is not refreshing as should be, keeping old errors?- if so, then there is an other serious issue because of why our PR is dropping on several pages?- do we have other problem with the site, which ends up with google penalizing us? Thank you for your ideas!
-
Thank you Peter!
That "underscore" issue just pass through my attention. I will change it now, and hopefully it reduces some of the warnings. However this "page-all" and prev/next feature I've introduced just in the last 2 weeks. So the main part could be something else.
Now the rel="prev/next" feature I suspended too on the website, so I am really curious on the results.
Much appreciated your feedback! Thanks again!
-
I wouldn't both canonical to the "View All" AND use rel=prev/next - that could be sending mixed signals to Google. I'd let one do its work, if possible. There's another issue, though - you're canonicaling to:
http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10-pageall/
...but the "View All" link goes to...
http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10_-pageall/
...with an "_" (hard to see, since it's linked above). These are two different URLs and could be causing you some serious problems. You're basically sending 3 potentially conflicting signals to Google.
-
Thanks Takeshi!
According to GWT our sitemap is parsed every 3 days (it is indexed in 90%) and the reports are updated also on 3-4 days period basis.
The canonicals we have been introduced more than two years ago. Fact is that I was not verifying it very often but as I remember there was only a few number of duplicate meta problems. Now they are about 12,000. That's twice of the number of the pages from the sitemap, and 30% of the 35,000 pages indexed by google. 35,000 is also much more than needed, I have to analyze if there are also duplicate pages.
-
Could just mean the data in GWT isn't current or Google hasn't re-indexed all the content yet. How long ago did you put in the canonicals?
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
-
Redirect closed shop to main shop, or keep the domain and content alive and use it for link building?
Hello, We used to have two shops selling our products, a small shop with a small selection of only our best quality products (domain smallshop.com), and a big shop with everything (bigshop.com). It used to make sense (without going into full detail), but it's not relevant anymore, and so we decided to stop maintaining the small shop, because it was time consuming and not worth it. There is some really good links pointing to smallshop.com, and the content is original (the product descriptions are different between both shops). So far, we just switch the "add to cart" button on the small shop into a link to the same product on the big shop, and did links from the small shop to the big shop also on categories pages. So the question is: in your opinion, is it better to do that, keep the small shop and content alive and build links to our big shop, or do 301 redirections and shut down completely the small shop ? Thanks for your opinion!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colage0 -
Did Google Ignore My Links?
Hello, I'm a little new to SEO, but I recently was featured (around 2 yrs ago) on some MAJOR tech blogs. For some reason however, my links aren't getting picked up for over 2 years - not even in MOZ, or other link checker services. - By now I should have had amazing boost from this natural building, but not sure what happened? This was completely white hat and natural links. The links were after the article was created though, would this effect things? - Please let me know if you have any advice! - Maybe I need to ping these some how or something? - Are these worthless? Thanks so much for your help! Here's some samples of the links that were naturally given to http://VaultFeed.com http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/09/13/microsoft-posts-cringe-worthy-windows-phone-video-ads-mocking-apple/ http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/15/4733176/microsoft-says-pulled-iphone-parody-ads-were-off-the-mark http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/16/microsoft_mocks_apple_in_vids_it_quickly_pulls/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2420710/Microsoft-forced-delete-cringe-worthy-spoof-videos-mocking-new-range-iPhones.html And a LOT more... Not sure if these links will never be valid, or maybe I'm doing something completely wrong? - Is there any way for Google to recognize these now, and then they'll be seen by MOZ and other sites too? I've done a LOT of searching and there's no definitive advice I've seen for links that were added after the URL was first indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DByers0 -
Canonical Confusion
So I have products appearing in several categories, all of which have the correct canonical url. But Moz is flagging up pages I never knew existed, and I don't understand why they exist at all and more so why my canonical fix isn't occurring for them, as below: SEO Friendly URL: http://thespacecollective.com/nasa-pin-sets/nasa-shuttle-mission-pin-set-no2 Weird URL to same product: http://thespacecollective.com/index.php?route=themecontrol/product&product_id=159 Is this a developer problem rather than an SEO problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Using a US CDN (Cloudflare) for a UK Site. Should I use a UK Based CDN as it says my server is based in USA
Hi All, We are a UK Company with Uk customers only and use CloudFlare CND. Our Site is hosted by a UK company with servers here but from looking online and checking where my site is hosted etc etc , some sites are telling me the name of our UK Hosted company and other sites are telling me my site is hosted in San Fran (USA) , where I presume the Cloudflare is based. I know Cloudflare has a couple of servers in the UK it uses but given all my customers are UK based ,I don't want this is affect rankings etc , as I thought it was a ranking benefit to be hosted in the country you are based. Is there any issue with this and should I change or is google clever enough to know so i shouldn't worry. thanks Pet
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Google penalty or what???
Hi, we have a blog site xxxxxxxxxxx.es, that yesterday dissapear from google ranks all of a sudden it only appears if you write xxxxxxxxx.es I have checked gogle webmaster tools and there are no manual actions, no messages. Also, we don't have much links pointing to this site. Webmaster tools show only 319 links. We don't understand what have happenned. Never see something similar. What do you think? Any help would be appreciated. How do you proceed in this cases? It doesn't seem to be a link problem. How do you know what kind of penalty do you have? Thank you. Update: Hi, the domain is www.crearcorreoelectronico.es I have check the majestic seo, ose, and wmt and get the links. We have some links that are not good, but are automatic ones, that some portals generate. Maybe is something related with the content. I don't know Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite1 -
On-site links
Hi everybody, There's a lot of information about getting sitewide backlinks, but so few about on-site optimization. Is there a maximum of links to put on a page ? Is there a maximum of link that a page should receive ? etc ... ? So, what is the optimal strategy ? And I'm only concerned about on-page and on-site link, not backlinks commming from other sites. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidPilon0 -
Am I buying links according to Google?
I have the opportunity to sponsor a variety of sections in a variety of .edu sites. Really appealing since they will both provide high quality traffic as well as to help our rankings... (maybe 🙂 )... Anyway this opportunity involves a monetary exchange, no different than advertising in Adwords and/or buying a display ad with the NYT. The links will be both text and banner... With follow links. My questions to you guys are: Is this practice penalize? And will display ads pass link juice also? Thanks for the help...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dhidalgo10 -
Use of the Canonical Tag, Both Internally and Cross Domain
I've seen the cross domain canonical not work at all in my test cases. And an interesting point was brought to my attention today. That point was that in order for the canonical tag to work, the page that you are referencing needs to have the exact same content. And that this was the whole point of the canonical tag, not for it to be used as a 301 but for it to consolidate pages with the same content. I want to know if this is true. Does the page you reference with a canonical tag have to have the same exact content? And what have been your experiences with using the canonical tag referencing another page on a different domain that has the same exact subject matter but not the exact duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GearyLSF372