What is Canonical URL Tag
-
What is Canonical URL Tag?
-
Not a problem! If you come across any other problems, let me know, I'd love to help!
-
Yes it does thank you. When I run the campaign it says I have two on some pages and I need to remove them. ( I am using WordPress so I assume this was an automatic tag it added - odd) So I will try and remove it and see what happens at next crawl. THANKS
-
Simply put, it's a tag that solves a problem.
Problem: Dynamic web pages get into trouble with duplicate content - Google will see a completely different page if the URL is changed in any way.
For instance, Google sees these as two different sites:
Just the trailing / will make Google index the page twice - which required much more resources to index all of that duplicate content.
So, the rel="canonical" tag exists to tell Google which version of the content to index - thus enabling less duplicate content.
All you need to do is add the rel="canonical" tag before the tag of your website, and you're good to go!
Does this help explain it?
-
here's a great post from SEOmoz about it: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not
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
-
What is the correct Canonical tag on m.site?
We have 2 separate sites for desktop (www.example.com) and mobile (m.example.com) As per the guideline, we have added Rel=alternate tag on www.example.com to point to mobile URL(m.example.com) and Rel=canonical tag on m.example.com to point to Desktop site(www.example.com).However, i didn't find any guideline on what canonical tag we should add ifFor Desktop sitewww.example.com/PageA - has a canonical tag to www.example.com/PageBOn this page, we have a Rel=alternate tag m.example.com/pageAWhat will be the canonical we should add for the mobile version of Page Am.example.com/PageA - Canonical tag point to www.example.com/PageA -or www.example.com/PageB?Kalpesh
Technical SEO | | kguard0 -
SEO URLs: 1\. URLs in my language (Greek, Greeklish or English)? 2\. Αt the end it is good to put -> .html? What is the best way to get great ranking?
Hello all, I must put URLs in my language Greek, Greeklish or in English? And at the end of url it is good to put -> .html? For exampe www.test.com/test/test-test.html ? What is the best way to get great ranking? I am a new digital marketing manager and its my first time who works with a programmer who doesn't know. I need to know as soon as possible, because they want to be "on air" tomorrow! Thank you very much for your help! Regards, Marios
Technical SEO | | marioskal0 -
Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google?
Hi, we re-branded and launched a new website in February 2016. In June we saw a steep drop in the number of URLs indexed, and there have continued to be smaller dips since. We started an account with Moz and found several thousand high priority crawl errors for duplicate pages and have since fixed those with canonical tags. However, we are still seeing the number of URLs indexed drop. Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this. A good portion of our URLs have canonical tags because they are just events with different dates, but otherwise the content of the page is the same.
Technical SEO | | zasite0 -
URL Structure Question
We are building a job board website that will have a decent amount of "career resources" type content and want to make sure we set up our url structure correctly. After researching on Google and here I have an idea how to structure it but would like some insight if we are on the right track. We are using Wordpress for the content part of our website. We will have about 5 content categories (like resume-tips, job-interviews, job-search etc.) The two options we are considering; www.domain.com/career-resources/index.html As content start page www.domain.com/career-resources/resume-tips/index.html category start page www.domain.com/career-resources/resume-tips/top-5-resume-mistakes.html article name is the /career-resources/ folder really needed or can we go something like; www.domain.com/career-resources/index.html As content start page www.domain.com/resume-tips/index.html category start page www.domain.com/resume-tips/top-5-resume-mistakes.html article name Are we on the right track... and is one way better for SEO that the other? Thanks! Shaun
Technical SEO | | aactive0 -
Single URL not indexed
Hi everyone! Some days ago, I noticed that one of our URLs (http://www.access.de/karriereplanung/webinare) is no longer in the Google index. We never had any form of penalty, link warning etc. Our traffic by Google is constantly growing every month. This single page does not have an external link pointing to it - only internal links. The page has been indexed all the time. The HTTP status code is 200, there is no noindex or something in the code. I submitted the URL on GWMT to let Google send it to the index. It was crawled successfully by Google, sent to the index 5 days ago - nothing happened, still not indexed. Do you have any suggestions why this page is no longer indexed? It is well linked internally and one click away from the home page. There is still the PR of 5 showing, I always thought that pages with PR are indexed.......
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Should rel canonical tags include the root domain
It does sound like a silly question but bear with me a little... I recently installed on my Joomla website a module that automatically creates rel canonical tags for pages that contain lists that can be sorted by different criteria: (price, alphabetic order, etc...) I know that a proper canonical tag should look like this: However, the module I'm using creates the following structure Will this work? I mean, will it be "understood" by the bots? To see what the module actually does, you can visit the following link http://www.quipeutlefaire.fr/fr/index.php?sort=price&sort_direction=desc&limit=10&limitstart=0&option=com_auctions&category=240 In the source code you will see that the canonical tag is Which is the original "unsorted" page. Thanks in advance for your help
Technical SEO | | QPLF0 -
Canonical tag, CNAME and 301 redirect
I have a website with a couple of domains pointing to one IP address. Let's say I have two domains www.example.com and www.example.ca I also see during my SEO analysis that the example.com and the www.example.com (same for the example.ca and the www.example.ca) are triggering server responses. How do I deal with this issue for best SEO. Canonical links? CNAME, or 301 redirects? thanks
Technical SEO | | casper4340 -
Is the full URL necessary for successful Canonical Links?
Hi, my first question and hopefully an easy enough one to answer. Currently in the head element of our pages we have canonical references such as: (Yes, untidy URL...we are working on it!) I am just trying to find out whether this snippet of the full URL is adequete for canonicalization or if the full domain is needed aswell. My reason for asking is that the SEOmoz On-Page Optimization grading tool is 'failing' all our pages on the "Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical" value. I have been unable to find a definitive answer on this, although admittedly most examples do use the full URL. (I am not the site developer so cannot simply change this myself, but rather have to advise him in a weekly meeting). So in short, presumably using the full URL is best practise, but is it essential to its effectiveness when being read by the search engines? Or could there be another reason why the "Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical" value is not being green ticked? Thank you very much, I appreciate any advice you can give.
Technical SEO | | rmkjersey0