Rel=canonical Notice
-
In the Crawl Diagnostics report we see there 314 Rel Canonical notices. We use the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin and noticed that the URL is the exact same as the Tag value. When looking into the issue more, I see that the rel canonical tag is pointing to the same page as itself. For example, on the www.domain.com/blog/ page, there is a link rel="canonical" href="/blog/".
- Is this an issue that needs to be fixed?
- How can it be fixed?
- Will this cause any potential ranking issues?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-
Ah, yes. Since the tag just "represents" the URL that should be used for the content, it doesn't produce an endless loop. Redirects (301 or 302) produce loops from time to time, but that is another issue. Good question to ask and good that you are looking at everything to make sure your site is healthy.
-
Thank you very much for your help. I just thought it was odd to have a rel canonical tag that pointed to itself. Seems like it would be an endless loop. Great to hear that this is not a concern and can be disregarded.
-
Hello!
It sounds like there are a few questions here.
First, let me clarify that the 314 Rel Canonical notices are just that - notices. They are there to let you know the canonical link elements are present and also the tag value or where they point to.
Second, in most cases, the tag values match the page URL. Canonical link elements are used to identify the URL search engines should use for the page no matter how the URL looks.
I don't think you have any issues that need to be fixed as long as you've confirmed the canonical link element tag values match the page you are reviewing. You shouldn't see any ranking issues.
Edit: Looks like Jesse chimed in as I was typing up a response. What he has said is correct, you should be fine :).
-
Nope, doesn't need to be fixed. There's nothing wrong with this practice, especially for a Wordpress site (imo).
The notices that moz tools are giving you are just that - to make you aware that those canonical tags exist. They aren't warnings or errors, just notices to draw your attention to canonicals in case you ever wanted to look into them or ensure they were correct.
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
-
Unsolved Moz Pro crawl signaling missing canonical which are not?
Hi,
Moz Pro | | rolandvintners
I'm trying MozPro considering using it.
One of the tool which is appealing is the crawl and insights.
After quick use, I really question many of the alerts, for instance, I got a "missing canonical tag" on this url: https://vintners.co/wine/grawu_gto#2020 but when I check my markup, there's clearly a canonical tag: <link rel="canonical" href="https://vintners.co/wine/grawu_gto"> Anybody can explain?
I asked Moz Pro staff when being onboarded but didn't get an answer...
Honestly, I'm questioning the value of these crawls, or may be I miss something?0 -
Duplicate Content errors - not going away with canonical
I am getting Duplicate Content Errors reported by Moz on search result pages due to parameters. I went through the document on resolving Duplicate Content errors and implemented the canonical solution to resolve it. The canonical in the header has been in place for a few weeks now and Moz is still showing the pages as Duplicate Content despite the canonical reference. Is this a Moz bug? http://mathematica-mpr.com/news/?facet={81C018ED-CEB9-477D-AFCC-1E6989A1D6CF}
Moz Pro | | jpfleiderer0 -
Duplicate Page Content, Indexing and Rel Canonical Just DOUBLED! Need Advice to Fix
Last Friday (Penguin 5/2.1) my website shot way off the grid and I noticed in my MOZ PRO Campaign dashboard that all of the following just doubled in numbers on my website: duplicate page content, Google indexing, and rel canonicals. I also noticed that some of my pages, images, tags and categories now added a /page/2/ or a -2. I just changed noindex for tags, but indexing for media, pages, posts, and categories. I'm currently using All In One SEO for a plugin. Any advice would be much appreciated as I'm stuck on the issue. relconical.png Duplicate-Page-Content.png [Duplicate Content II](Duplicate Content II) index1.png
Moz Pro | | CelebrityPersonalTrainer0 -
Why do I see a duplicate content errors when rel="canonical" tag is present
I was reviewing my first Moz crawler report and noticed the crawler returned a bunch of duplicate page content errors. The recommendations to correct this issue are to either put a 301 redirect on the duplicate URL or use the rel="canonical" tag so Google knows which URL I view as the most important and the one that should appear in the search results. However, after poking around the source code I noticed all of the pages that are returning duplicate content in the eyes of the Moz crawler already have the rel="canonical" tag. Does the Moz crawler simply not catch whether that tag is being used? If I have that tag in place, is there anything else I need to do in order to get that error to stop showing up in the Moz crawler report?
Moz Pro | | shinolamoz0 -
Update in Moz spider/tools?? Flagging duplicate content / ignoring canonical
Hi all, Has there been an update in the SEOmoz crawling software? We now have thousands of dupe content/page title warnings for paginated product page URLs that have correctly formatted canonicals. e.g. http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/tweed-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx ... has following pages with identical content that have been flagged: http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/olive-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx?p=true&rspage=4 http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/olive-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx?p=true&rspage=6 http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/olive-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx?p=true&rspage=4 ..plus 4 more URL's. But they all have canonical set. There's even a notice at the bottom of report that tells us there's a canonical set to http://www.woolovers.com/british-wool/mens/tweed-green/wool-countryman-suede-patch-sweater.aspx What gives, SEOmoz ?? Thanks Michael
Moz Pro | | LawrenceNeal0 -
Does Rogerbot recognize rel="alternate" hreflang="x"?
Rogerbot just completed its first crawl and is reporting all kinds of duplicate content - both page content and meta title/description. The pages it is calling duplicate are used with rel="alternate" hreflang="x", but are still being labeled as dupes. The title and descriptions are usually exactly the same, so I am working on getting at least those translated into different languages. I think its getting tripped up because the product page its crawling are only in English, but the chrome of the site is in the translated languages. The URLs look like so: Original: site.com/product Detected duplicates: site.com/fr/product, site.com/de/product, site.com/zh-hans/product
Moz Pro | | sedwards0 -
Canonical URLs for Search Parameters
Hi Guys Our seomoz campaign report is returning a lot or Rel Canonical issues similar to this for each page. The non / version redirects to the / version but how do I get the ones with search parameters ie '?datefrom&nights' to redirect. http://www.lamangaclubresort.co.uk/accommodations/las-brisas-78
Moz Pro | | JohnTulley
http://www.lamangaclubresort.co.uk/accommodations/las-brisas-78/
http://www.lamangaclubresort.co.uk/accommodations/las-brisas-78/?datefrom&nights
http://www.lamangaclubresort.co.uk/accommodations/las-brisas-78/?datefrom=&nights= Any help would be welcome, thanks0 -
I have a Rel Canonical "notice" in my Crawl Diagnostics report. I'm presuming that means that the spider has detected a rel canonical tag and it is working as opposed to warning about an issue, is this correct?
I know this seems like a really dumb question but the site I'm working on is a BigCommerce one and I've been concerned about canonicalisation issues prior to receiving this report (I'm a SEOmoz pro newbie also!) and I just want to be clear I am reading this notice correctly. I presume this means that the site crawl has detected the rel canonical tag on these pages and it is working correctly. Is this correct?? Any input is much appreciated. Thanks
Moz Pro | | seanpearse0