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  4. Does it do harm if you add a rel="canonical" tag on a page that doesn't need it?

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Does it do harm if you add a rel="canonical" tag on a page that doesn't need it?

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  • jaychow
    jaychow last edited by Feb 1, 2013, 11:42 PM

    If a page is clearly unique and there is obviously no canonical tag needed, does it hurt anything if one has been added?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • MattAntonino
      MattAntonino @jaychow last edited by Feb 5, 2013, 6:55 PM Feb 5, 2013, 6:55 PM

      In my opinion, you want the juice for each article to stay with each article.  I wouldn't redirect all your article juice back to the main /blog page.  For me, each unique page (and article) gets its own canonical link and one line = one set of information.  Article about oranges, article about apples, both canonical links.  You should only get juice from same or similar pages, such as

      yoursite.com/

      yoursite.com/index.php

      www.yoursite.com/index.php

      www.yoursite.com/

      But not

      yoursite.com/oranges/

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • jaychow
        jaychow @MattAntonino last edited by Feb 4, 2013, 11:46 PM Feb 4, 2013, 11:46 PM

        hey matt, thanks for the response.  let me ask you this.  i have a blog page with a bunch of snippets, that when clicked, lead to the full articles, (each have their own custom page/url).  if i want all the juice to go to the main blog page i don't want to have canonical tags on each individual post page, right?

        MattAntonino 1 Reply Last reply Feb 5, 2013, 6:55 PM Reply Quote 0
        • TakeshiYoung
          TakeshiYoung @MattAntonino last edited by Feb 2, 2013, 4:24 AM Feb 2, 2013, 4:24 AM

          Agreed. You page can sometimes end up with query parameters as well when people link to your site, and having the canonical in place will help you avoid having duplicate content.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MattAntonino
            MattAntonino last edited by Feb 5, 2013, 4:22 PM Feb 2, 2013, 12:33 AM

            It shouldn't hurt you if it doesn't need it but assuming you have www and non-www, wouldn't that part of the canonical always help anyways?  By default, you would have

            http://www.yoursite.com/notagneeded

            http://yoursite.com/notagneeded

            and if you're on most common CMSs,

            http://www.yoursite.com/notagneeded/index.php or index.html or index.asp

            It would actually be pretty rare to have a page with absolutely no use for rel=canonical but I don't see why it would hurt at all.

            TakeshiYoung jaychow 2 Replies Last reply Feb 4, 2013, 11:46 PM Reply Quote 3
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