How accurate and quick does Google pick up on canonical tags?
-
Hey Peeps!
I was just wondering what your experiences are in how fast Google will pick up on canonical tags and how often they use the 'strong hint' in stead of leaving it be?
I'm based in The Netherlands and for websites with a decent amount of content and links (where Google indexes new content quickly) they pick up on it within 1-2 weeks.
So far they've ignored some canonical tags on one of my websites. Perhaps that's because they don't agree with the degree in which the pages are similar.
Thanks in advance!
-
Oh yes... a touch larger than 10k. Big touch too
Some we've been able to 301, however it is mostly a faceted search issues on the site we are working on - so those pages need to stay live to users.
-
Thanks for your response Mat! How big is a big site in your case? 10.000+ pages?
Is there any way you could use 301-redirects instead of canonical tags? Honestly, when I get the chance to use a 301-redirect (when the page I'm trying to de-indexed is not usefull for a user) I choose to use a 301-redirect.
-
Honestly Billy, I do not remember precisely. I noticed it like 4 weeks back. I think it was something like a WordPress category page which was created some DC. When I do remember or when I see it again I'll let you know!
-
It can be slow - particularly on a big site that is crawled slowly. We've got an over-sized site thanks to some iffy CMS logic that we are trying to get Google to follow canonical instructions on. It's happening slowly, but is taking months.
-
Would you care to share those pages? This is not an issue I have ever had and you have sparked my curiosity.
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
-
Recommendations for the length of h1 tags and how much does it matter. What is the major disadvantage if the h1 tags are slightly longer.
recommendations for the length of h1 tags and how much does it matter. What is the major disadvantage if the h1 tags are slightly longer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MariaMcGrath0 -
Duplicate Title tags even with rel=canonical
Hello, We were having duplicate content in our blog (a replica of each post automatically was done by the CMS), until we recently implemented a rel=canonical tag to all the duplicate posts (some 5 weeks ago). So far, no duplicate content were been found, but we are still getting duplicate title tags, though the rel=canonical is present. Any idea why is this the case and what can we do to solve it? Thanks in advance for your help. Tej Luchmun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | luxresorts0 -
Is it a problem that Google's index shows paginated page urls, even with canonical tags in place?
Since Google shows more pages indexed than makes sense, I used Google's API and some other means to get everything Google has in its index for a site I'm working on. The results bring up a couple of oddities. It shows a lot of urls to the same page, but with different tracking code.The url with tracking code always follows a question mark and could look like: http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example http://www.MozExampleURL.com?another-tracking-examle http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example-3 etc So, the only thing that distinguishes one url from the next is a tracking url. On these pages, canonical tags are in place as: <link rel="canonical<a class="attribute-value">l</a>" href="http://www.MozExampleURL.com" /> So, why does the index have urls that are only different in terms of tracking urls? I would think it would ignore everything, starting with the question mark. The index also shows paginated pages. I would think it should show the one canonical url and leave it at that. Is this a problem about which something should be done? Best... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Can Googlebots read canonical tags on pages with javascript redirects?
Hi Moz! We have old locations pages that we can't redirect to the new ones because they have AJAX. To preserve pagerank, we are putting canonical tags on the old location pages. Will Googlebots still read these canonical tags if the pages have a javascript redirect? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Google+ Page Question
Just started some work for a new client, I created a Google+ page and a connected YouTube page, then proceeded to claim a listing for them on google places for business which automatically created another Google+ page for the business listing. What do I do in this situation? Do I delete the YouTube page and Google+ page that I originally made and then recreate them using the Google+ page that was automatically created or do I just keep both pages going? If the latter is the case, do I use the same information to populate both pages and post the same content to both pages? That doesn't seem like it would be efficient or the right way to go about handling this but I could be wrong.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | goldbergweismancairo0 -
Alternative to rel canonical?
Hello there, we have a problem. Let's say we have a website www.mainwebsite.com Then you have 40 websites like this: www.retailer1.mainwebsite.com www.retailer2.mainwebsite.com www.retailer3.mainwebsite.com www.retailer4.mainwebsite.com www.retailer5.mainwebsite.com www.retailer6.mainwebsite.com … an so on In order to avoid the duplicate content penalty from Google we've added a rel="canonical" in each 40 sub-websites mapping each page of them to www.mainwebsite.com Our issue is that now, all our retailers (each owner of www.retailer-X.mainwebsite.com) are complaining about the fact that they are disappeared from Google. How can we avoid to use rel="canonical" in the sub-website and not being penalised by Google for duplicate content in www.mainwebsite.com? Many thanks, all your advices are much appreciated. YESdesign team
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YESdesign0 -
Google bot vs google mobile bot
Hi everyone 🙂 I seriously hope you can come up with an idea to a solution for the problem below, cause I am kinda stuck 😕 Situation: A client of mine has a webshop located on a hosted server. The shop is made in a closed CMS, meaning that I have very limited options for changing the code. Limited access to pagehead and can within the CMS only use JavaScript and HTML. The only place I have access to a server-side language is in the root where a Defualt.asp file redirects the visitor to a specific folder where the webshop is located. The webshop have 2 "languages"/store views. One for normal browsers and google-bot and one for mobile browsers and google-mobile-bot.In the default.asp (asp classic). I do a test for user agent and redirect the user to one domain or the mobile, sub-domain. All good right? unfortunately not. Now we arrive at the core of the problem. Since the mobile shop was added on a later date, Google already had most of the pages from the shop in it's index. and apparently uses them as entrance pages to crawl the site with the mobile bot. Hence it never sees the default.asp (or outright ignores it).. and this causes as you might have guessed a huge pile of "Dub-content" Normally you would just place some user-agent detection in the page head and either throw Google a 301 or a rel-canon. But since I only have access to JavaScript and html in the page head, this cannot be done. I'm kinda running out of options quickly, so if anyone has an idea as to how the BEEP! I get Google to index the right domains for the right devices, please feel free to comment. 🙂 Any and all ideas are more then welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReneReinholdt0 -
Canonical tag for similar page with different theme.
Our commerce system allows products to be shared across multiple categories/sections of our site. E.G. /boxes/blue-box.html /circles/blue-box.html This enables the product to show up in different areas of the site, but does not link to an evergreen URL. We are considering using the canonical tag to resolve this issue, but our question relates to the similarity of the pages. Each section folder (e.g. /boxes/ and /circles/) has a different header, left navigation and footer. They are similar in layout and some content is the same, but a good portion is different in the header and nav. Each category nav basically deals with deeper links in it's own category. The product title, image, description, etc. is all the same and makes up the bulk of the page. Is this a good candidate for the canonical tag or should we attempt to accommodate an evergreen URL?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh-att0