Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Research & Trends
    3. Algorithm Updates
    4. Should my canonical tags point to the category page or the filter result page?

    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.

    Should my canonical tags point to the category page or the filter result page?

    Algorithm Updates
    4
    5
    5167
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • DA2013
      DA2013 Subscriber last edited by

      Hi Moz,

      I'm working on an ecommerce site with categories, filter options, and sort options – teacherexpress.scholastic.com.

      Should I have canonical tags from all filter and sort options point to the category page like gap.com and llbean.com? or have all sort options point to the filtered page URL like kohls.com?

      I was under the impression that to use a canonical tag, the pages have to have the same content, meaning that Gap and L.L. Bean would be using canonical tags incorrectly. Using a filter changes the content, whereas using a sort option just changes the order.

      What would be the best way to deal with duplicate content for this site?

      Thanks for reading!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • KeriMorgret
        KeriMorgret last edited by

        Hi Daniel,

        You've gotten some good responses to your question. Do you have any additional questions or comments you would like to add?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • MichaelC-15022
          MichaelC-15022 @TommyTan last edited by

          I agree, that's a great approach.  I think you mean Javascript, not Java though (that's a different language).  The only thing that might make this approach a challenge would be if you had so much product data before filtering that it caused a performance problem, i.e. let's say you had 50 pages of results...if you filter server-side, you're only sending down 1 page of results, whereas if you're filtering with client-side Javascript, you've got to send all 50 pages down and then filter it in the browser.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • TommyTan
            TommyTan @MichaelC-15022 last edited by

            Hi Daniel,

            Another option may be use java on your filter page so that however customers filter the product, the URL will remain the same with extra parameters in the URL to filter out the products.  I find this the best way as you have the same URL for all sort of customization/filter and able to avoid duplicate content.

            For example: Macys

            MichaelC-15022 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • MichaelC-15022
              MichaelC-15022 last edited by

              Hi Daniel,

              You're going to have to walk a fine line between having a page for every possible combination of filtered results that a user might search for AND appearing to have a ton of pages that are really almost identical....and suffering the wrath of Panda upon seeing what it thinks is duplicate content.

              The easy way out is to have 1 page for each category, and no matter what filters are applied, rel=canonical to that category.  Dupe content problem solved.

              So why isn't this the ideal solution?

              #1 You may be missing out on targeting combinations of categories and filters that users will commonly search for.  Let's say you were selling clothing, and a category was shirts, and you had a filter for men/women/boys/girls.  By making all shirts list pages rel=canonical to the overall shirts list page (with no filters), you'd be missing an opportunity to target "boys shirts".

              #2 You may be missing opportunities to pour more link juice to the individual product pages.  It's unclear (to me, anyway) whether Google adds the link juice from all pages rel=canonical'ed to a page, or whether Google simply treats rel=canonical as "oh ya, I've already seen & dealt with this page".  Certainly in my testing I've seen places where pages rel=canonical'ed to another page actually still show up in the search results, so I'd say rel=canonical isn't as solid as a 301.

              So what do you do?  I'd recommend a mix.  Figure out what combinations you think you can get search traffic from, and find a way to break down the complete set of combinations of filters and categories to target those, and to rel=canonical every page to one of your targeted pages.

              It's entirely possible (likely, even) that you'll end up with a mix.  For instance, going back to my earlier example, let's say you had another filter that was, let's say, price range.  You might want to target "boys shirts", but not "boys shirts under $20".  So, while "boys" was a filter value, and "under $20" was a filter value, you might rel=canonical all pages in the category "boys" with a filter value of "shirts" to your page that has just that category and that 1 filter set, regardless of setting of the price filter.

              Clear as monkey poop?

              TommyTan 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Lauren1689

                How often should I update the content on my pages?

                I have started dropping on my rankings - due to lack of time after having a baby. I'm still managing to blog but I'm wondering if I update the content on my pages will that help? All my Meta tags and page descriptions were updated over a year ago - do I need to update these too? We were ranking in the top spots for a good few years, but we're slowly falling 😞 Please give me any advice to keep us from falling even further. I have claimed all my listings, and try to add new links once a month. I share my blog to all social sites and work hard to get Google reviews, we have 53 which is higher than any of our competitors. Any other ideas? Have I missed something that Google is looking for nowadays? Many thanks 🙂

                Algorithm Updates | | Lauren1689
                0
              • markjoyce

                Product pages - should the meta description match our product description?

                Hi, I am currently adding new products to my website and was wondering, should I use our product description (which is keyword optimised) in the meta description for SEO purposes? Or would this be picked up by Google as duplicate content? Thanks in advance.

                Algorithm Updates | | markjoyce
                1
              • vtmoz

                More pages or less pages for best SEO practices?

                Hi all, I would like to know the community's opinion on this. A website with more pages or less pages will rank better? Websites with more pages have an advantage of more landing pages for targeted keywords. Less pages will have advantage of holding up page rank with limited pages which might impact in better ranking of pages. I know this is highly dependent. I mean to get answers for an ideal website. Thanks,

                Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz
                1
              • prsntsnh

                Does omitted results shown by Google always mean that website has duplicate content?

                Google search results for a particular query was appearing in top 10 results but now the page appears but  only after clicking on the " omitted results by google." My website lists different businesses in a particular locality and sometimes results for different localities are same because we show results from nearby area if number of businesses in that locality (search by users) are less then 15. Will this be considered as "duplicate content"? If yes then what steps can be taken to resolve this issue?

                Algorithm Updates | | prsntsnh
                0
              • marcandre

                How to content marketing: Should my blog posts link to my sales page?

                Hi, I've been doing a weekly blog making sure that each blog post contains my money keywords in the text, sometimes in h2 tags etc. My blog posts never contain any links to my actual sales page. Should I link each blog post to my sale page or is it overdoing it? Will internal linking of all my blog posts to my sales page will improve its page authority or have any SEO benefits? What about using exact match anchor text on these internal links? I couldn't find any resource online about this matter. Thank you for your opinion and help! -Marc

                Algorithm Updates | | marcandre
                0
              • EricMoore

                How to find which keywords bring traffic to a particular page on my website ?

                I have been using Google Analytics and SEOMoz tools for a while now. I know which are my top landing pages and some of the keywords which bring me traffic. But I don't know which are the top searched keywords for my website as these are "not provided" by Google Analytics. More importantly, I want to know which keywords are directing traffic to a particular page on my website. Can anyone help ?

                Algorithm Updates | | EricMoore
                0
              • McTaggart

                Keyword density and meta tags

                Hi, I've just checked the number of keywords appearing on my website's pages. On some of them the keyword density was way too high (7-10%) if you included the meta tags, but all under 3.5% if I didn't include the keywords and description meta tags. So my question is - when looking at number of keywords used per page, do I have to worry about what's in those meta tags? Do the keywords in there count towards keyword density / number of keywords per page? Thanks, Luke

                Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart
                0
              • loopyal

                Stop google indexing CDN pages

                Just when I thought I'd seen it all, google hits me with another nasty surprise! I have a CDN to deliver images, js and css  to visitors around the world. I have no links to static HTML pages on the site, as far as I can tell, but someone else may have - perhaps a scraper site? Google has decided the static pages they were able to access through the CDN have more value than my real pages, and they seem to be slowly replacing my pages in the index with the static pages. Anyone got an idea on how to stop that? Obviously, I have no access to the static area, because it is in the CDN, so there is no way I know of that I can have a robots file there. It could be that I have to trash the CDN and change it to only allow the image directory, and maybe set up a separate CDN subdomain for content that only contains the JS and CSS? Have you seen this problem and beat it? (Of course the next thing is Roger might look at google results and start crawling them too, LOL) P.S. The reason I am not asking this question in the google forums is that others have asked this question many times and nobody at google has bothered to answer, over the past 5 months, and nobody who did try, gave an answer that was remotely useful. So I'm not really hopeful of anyone here having a solution either, but I expect this is my best bet because you guys are always willing to try.

                Algorithm Updates | | loopyal
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.