Do you lose link juice when stripping query strings with canonicals?
-
It is well known that when page A canonicals to page B, some link juice is lost (similar to a 301). So imagine I have the following pages:
Page A: www.mysite.com/main-page which has the tag: <link rel="canonical" href="http: www.mysite.com="" main-page"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:>
Page B: www.mysite.com/main-page/sub-page which is a variation of Page A, so it has a tag
I know that links to page B will lose some of their SEO value, as if I was 301ing from page B to page A.
Question:
What about this link: www.mysite.com/main-page?utm_medium=moz&utm_source=qa&utm_campaign=forum
Will it also lose link juice since the query string is being stripped by the canonical tag? In terms of SEO, is this like a redirect?
-
You can check the cache copy, in some cases Google appends the parameter and in some cases it does not. This depends on the authority of the specific URL.
-
This is not 100% a fact, but i think you will lose "some" juice but certainly not significant!
-
Thanks for the quick and thorough response, Sajeet.
I just need a little clarification:
In the example you gave: www.mysite.com/main-page?medium=abc this page will be canonicaled to www.mysite.com/main-page. Are you saying that in such a case I will lose some link juice but not when the query string has utm parameters? If this is what you mean, how do you know that Google treats different query strings differently?
-
Hi,
Regarding UTM parameters, if implemented correctly, Google will not treat it as a separate URL. For example - www.mysite.com/main-page?utm_medium=moz&utm_source=qa&utm_campaign=forum and www.mysite.com/main-page will be treated as the same page.
For manual tagging always remember, you can only add the following parameters -
- Campaign Medium
- Campaign Source
- Campaign Term
- Campaign Content
- Campaign Name
Canonical tags should be placed under the following circumstances -
- When 301 is not an option
- When you append dynamic parameters to URLs that Google will treat as a separate entity For example - www.mysite.com/main-page?medium=abc
In your case I would suggest that there is no need to place a canonical tag since the tagging adheres to Google guidelines. However for hygiene purposes you can place a self canonical tag.
Note - I have noticed that in some PPC campaigns people append the URL with utm_adgroup. Please note that this is wrong technique and Google does not recognize it. In such scenarios, use auto tagging instead.
Regards,
Sajeet
-
You asked a very similar question earlier: http://moz.com/community/q/are-links-with-query-strings-worse-for-seo
Like iQSEO-UK said back then we haven't seen big impact on SEO with urls with query strings and specially utm tracking. I personally havent had any issues as well with duplicated content, or results double in the search engines or something. When you 301 it, if will have some loss in juice, and i suggest with a canonical this does as wel a little bit, but nothing significant for sure!
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
-
301 Redirect from query string to new static page
If i want to create a redirect from a page where the slug ends like this "/?i=4839&mid=1000&id=41537" to a static, more SEO friendly slug like "/contact-us/", will a standard 301 redirect suffice? Thanks, Nails
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | matt.nails0 -
Link juice through URL parameters
Hi guys, hope you had a fantastic bank holiday weekend. Quick question re URL parameters, I understand that links which pass through an affiliate URL parameter aren't taken into consideration when passing link juice through one site to another. However, when a link contains a tracking URL parameter (let's say gclid=), does link juice get passed through? We have a number of external links pointing to our main site, however, they are linking directly to a unique tracking parameter. I'm just curious to know about this. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Links on page
Hi I have a web page which lists about 50-60 products which links out to either a pdf on the product or the main manufacturers website page containing product detail. The site in non e-commerce is this the site/page likely to get hit by Penguin? Would it be best to create a separate page for the product/manufacturer group i.e 5 or 6 pages but linking out to the PDFs etc...?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Internal links question
I've read that Google frowns upon large numbers of internal links. We're building a site that helps users browse a list of shows via dozens of genres. If the genres are expose, say, as a pulldown menu as opposed to a list of static links, and selecting the pulldown option filters the list of shows, would those genres count against our internal links count?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
How do I find the links on my site that link to another one of my pages?
I ran IIS Seo toolkit and it found about 40 pages that I have no idea how they exist. What tool can I use to find out what internal link is linking to them so I can fix them or get rid of them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Is link juice passed through a 301 and a canonical tag?
Hi all, I am led to believe that link juice does not pass through more than one 301 redirect, however what about a 301 and then a canonical meta tag? Here is an example: subdomain.site.com/uk/page/ -> 301 -> **www.**site.com/uk/page/ www.site.com**/uk/**page/ -> canonical -> www.site.com/page/ Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Further
Chris0 -
Internal Javascript Links
Hi, We have a client who has internal links pointing to some relatively new pages that we asked them to implement. The problem is that instead of using standard HTML links, their developers have used javascript - e.g. javascript:GoTo... The new pages have links from the homepage (among others) and have been live for about 3-4 weeks now - yet are still to be indexed by Google, Bing & Yahoo. Is it possibe that Javascript links are making them difficult to be found? Thanks in advance for any tips.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasarrow0 -
Linking Back
Hello, I have a blog www.digitaldiscovery.eu and I have been working the link building. Now I have a few links pointing into my blog and in Google Webmaster and in Open Site Explorer I can see the URL of those websites. In scale from 1 to 10 how usefull is to have a blogroll in my blog pointing back to those high PR links? How usefull is this in link-building strategy? Tks in advance! PP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0