Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Two different canonical tags on one page
-
Due to an error, some of my pages now have two canonical tags on them. One is correct and the other goes to a nonsense URL (404 page).
I know I should ideally remove the incorrect ones, but it's a big manual job. Are they doing any harm? Can I just leave them there and let Google figure it out?
The correct ones are higher up in the code. Will this make a difference?
Any help appreciated.
-
Unfortunately, what Google can do and what they actually do can really vary. If you're mixing signals and doubling up the canonicals, the odds that they'll get it right are pretty low, in my experience. I think it's worth the fix, if these are traffic-generating pages.
-
You should certainly fix this. You don't want google having to guess what you are trying to tell them. For the most part they will probably get it right, especially in your case with the 404s. But if this is occurring too frequently then they may begin to ignore your canonicals all together. Or worse, you may loose some google trust.
I'd put this on my fix it list.
-
Thanks Scott. It's only wrong on a few hundred pages and they're all quite deep. If it were wrong on the important pages I'd fix it.
-
You should change it, I'm no canonical expert, but the whole point of having it is to tell google how you want it to show, ex. www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com. If your not going to change it for all of your pages then at least do it for your home page as this is the one that usually gets the most attention.
-
Well that's good news. Think I'll just leave them there then. Thanks!
-
This is stright from Google Webmasters:
"What happens if rel="canonical" points to a non-existent page? Or if more than one page in a set is specified as the canonical version?
We'll do our best to algorithmically determine an appropriate canonical page, just as we've done in the past."
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
Hope that 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
-
Should I "no-index" two exact pages on Google results?
Hello everyone, I recently started a new wordpress website and created a static homepage. I noticed that on Google search results, there are two different URLs landing on same content page. I've attached an image to explain what I saw. Should I "no-index" the page url? Google url.JPG In this picture, the first result is the homepage and I try to rank for that page. The last result is landing on same content with different URL. So, should I no-index last result as shown in image?
Technical SEO | | amanda59640 -
I have two robots.txt pages for www and non-www version. Will that be a problem?
There are two robots.txt pages. One for www version and another for non-www version though I have moved to the non-www version.
Technical SEO | | ramb0 -
Rel=Canonical For Landing Pages
We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created. We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale. The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Should I noindex my blog's tag, category, and author pages
Hi there, Is it a good idea to no index tag, category, and author pages on blogs? The tag pages sometimes have duplicate content. And the category and author pages aren't really optimized for any search term. Just curious what others think. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rignite0 -
Do H2 tags carry more weight than h4 tags?
Of course H tags are key signals for relevance in search. Does an h2 tag send a significantly "louder" signal than an h4 tag?
Technical SEO | | aj6130 -
Canonical tag for Home page: with or without / at the end???
Setting up canonical tags for an old site. I really need advice on that darn backslash / at the end of the homepage URL. We have incoming links to the homepage as http://www.mysite.com (without the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/ (with the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/index.html I know that there should be 301 redirects to just one version, but I need to know more about the canonical tags... Which should the canonical tag be??? (without the backslash) or (with the backslash) Thanks for your help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
Robots.txt and canonical tag
In the SEOmoz post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts, it's being said - If you have a robots.txt disallow in place for a page, the canonical tag will never be seen. Does it so happen that if a page is disallowed by robots.txt, spiders DO NOT read the html code ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050
