Exact Syntax for Canonical to PDFs for Windows Server
-
Hi There,
I have got in my web several PDFs with the same content of the HTML version. Thus I need to set up a canonical for each of them in order to avoid duplicate content.
In particular, I need to know how to write the exact syntax for the windows server (web.config) in order to implement the canonical to PDF. I surfed the web but it seems I cannot find this piece of info anywhere
Thanks a lot!!
-
Thanks Paul
I had a look at the page, but as I can see it uses headers to identify the response, but the actions are rewrite or redirect. There is a custom response you can use,
for a definitive answer I would ask on iis.net http://forums.iis.net/
Or you could place each pdf in its own folder and place the header on the folder
-
To implement a canonical tag for an individual page/file in IIS, you need to insert a custom response header via an outbound rule in the IIS Rewrite module, not through the web.config.
Sorry I don't have a specific example handy (haven't had to wrassle with IIS in some time). I'll see if I can dig one up.
Meanwhile, here's a link to the relevant section of the general Rewrite Module info in case maybe Alan can suggest the specifics.
Paul
-
Thanks for finding that, I see it says url, but I cant see how that is actually done. All it does it create a web.config in the folder you choose, I found no way of doing it ofr the indervidual file, unless you have only one file per forder
here is the web.config, how to test it works?
<configuration><system.webserver><httpprotocol><customheaders><add name="CononicalUrl" value="Link: http:/domain.com/my.pdf; rel=canonical"></add></customheaders></httpprotocol></system.webserver></configuration>
-
Not according to this doc:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753812(v=ws.10).aspx
"Levels
The procedures for configuring HTTP headers can be performed at the following levels in IIS:
-
Web Server
-
Site
-
Application
-
Physical and virtual directories
-
File (URL)"
-
-
My mistake
-
I don't think this can be done in web.config. I don't think it can be done at all.
while you can add a canonical header, to a folder using IIS, you cant add if to a file.
-
He's on a windows server and there is no .htaccess, you use web.config.
-
Hi, I believe your question is answered here via .htaccess file rather than web.config. Moz blog: How To: Advanced rel="canonical" HTTP Headers
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
-
Chrome 79 Update and PDFs
I've been taking precautions for the Chrome 79 and 80 updates that will be more strict about serving mixed content. Quick question: will this impact http:// PDFs on https:// pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchStan0 -
Copied Content - Define Canonical
Hello, The Story I am working on a news organization. Our website is the https://www.neakriti.gr My question regards copied content with source references. Sometimes a small portion of our content is based on some third article that is posted on some site (that is about 1% of our content). We always put "source" reference if that is the case. This is inevitable as "news" is something that sometimes has sources on other news sites, especially if there is something you cannot verify or don't have immediate sources, and therefore you need to state that "according to this source, something has happened". Here is one article of ours that has a source from another site: https://www.neakriti.gr/article/ellada-nea/1503363/nekros-vrethike-o-agnooumenos-arhimandritis-stin-lakonia/ if you open the above article you will see we have a link to the equivalent article of the original source site http://lakonikos.gr/epikairothta/item/133664-nekros-entopistike-o-arximandritis-p-andreas-bolovinos-synexis-enimerosi Now here is my question. I have read in other MOZ forum articles that a "canonical" approach solves this issue... How can we be legit when it comes to duplicate content in the eyes of search engines? Should we use some kind of canonical link to the source site? Should the "canonical" be inside the link in some way? Should it be on our section? Our site has AMP equivalent pages (if you add the /amp keyword at the end of the article URL). Our AMP pages have canonical to our original article. So if we have a "canonical" approach how would the AMP be effected as well? Also by applying a possible canonical solution to the source URL, does that "canonical" effect our article as not being shown in search results, thus passing all indexing to the canonical site? (I know that canonical indicates what URL is to be indexed). Additionally, does such a canonical indication make us legit in such a case in the eyes of search engines? (i.e. it eliminates any possible article duplication for original content in the eyes of search engines?). Or simply put, having a simple link to the original article (as we have it now) is enough for the search engines to understand that we have reference to original article URL? How would we approach this problem in our site based on its current structure?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ioannisanif0 -
Canonical tags and product descriptions
I just wanted to check what you guys thought of this strategy for duplicate product descriptions. A sample product is a letter bracelet - a, b, c etc so there are 26 products with identical descriptions. It is going to be extremely difficult to come up with 25 new unique descriptions so with recommendation i'm looking to use the canonical tag. I can't set any to no-index because visitors will look for explicit letters. Because the titles only differ by the letter then a search for either letter bracelet letter a bracelet letter i bracelet will just return results for 'letter bracelet' due to stop words unless the searcher explicitly searches for 'letter "a" bracelet. So I reckon I can make 4 new unique descriptions. I research what are the most popular letters picking 5 from the top (excluding 'a' and 'i'). Equally share the remaining letters between those 5 and with each group set a canonical tag pointing to the primary letter of that group. Does this seem a sensible thing to do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?
Hello here, here are my questions for you related to the canonical tag: 1. If I put online a new webpage with a canonical tag pointing to a different page, will this new page be indexed by Google and will I be able to find it in the index? 2. If instead I apply the canonical tag to a page already in the index, will this page be removed from the index? Thank you in advance for any insights! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Canonical URL Question
Hi Everyone I like to run this question by the community and get a second opinion on best practices for an issue that I ran into. I got two pages, Page A is the original page and Page B is the page with duplicate content. We already added** ="Page A**" />** to the duplicate content (Page B).** **Here is my question, since Page B is duplicate content and there is a link rel="canonical" added to it, would you put in the time to add meta tags and optimize the title of the page? Thanks in advance for all your help.**
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRTBA0 -
How important is sticking to an exact keyword?
The latest article I'm writing for my site is "Friends With Benefits Rules"... So the first part of my question is, what does SEOMoz advocate as being the ideal # of times to include the entire key phrase in the article? I know nobody but Google knows for certain, but is 4 (including in H1's etc.) generally considered enough, other than in the page title? Second part is, what is the consensus about how important is it to stick to the exact keyword? For the example I gave, is it just as good to include a comma, E.g. "...friends with benefits, rules..." or a hyphen "Friends with Benefits - Rules for..."? One thing I'm unclear about on this topic is stop words and plurals. I've been told before that Google ignores stop words, but results for searches with or without the word "how," for example produce very different results... Same thing with plurals. In any case, all of the above is assuming that the quality of the content would not be affected in either case...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corp08030 -
Rel Canonical = WHAT
can someone please explain this "NOTICE" i am getting from my campaign...Is this a problem that needs attention?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEObleu.com0 -
Use of the Canonical Tag, Both Internally and Cross Domain
I've seen the cross domain canonical not work at all in my test cases. And an interesting point was brought to my attention today. That point was that in order for the canonical tag to work, the page that you are referencing needs to have the exact same content. And that this was the whole point of the canonical tag, not for it to be used as a 301 but for it to consolidate pages with the same content. I want to know if this is true. Does the page you reference with a canonical tag have to have the same exact content? And what have been your experiences with using the canonical tag referencing another page on a different domain that has the same exact subject matter but not the exact duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GearyLSF372