Canonical Query
-
If Google decides to ignore your canonical and indexes numerous versions, does that count as duplicate content?
We've got a large amount of canonicals ignored by Google, so I'm just trying to gauge if it's an issue or not.
-
Hi Ruth,
Appreciate your response. Trying to get these sorted at a code level, but we currently have six different issues all providing various issues, along with a variety of other features not working correctly. (The joys of working with a 10 year old system that is behind in a few areas)
You say the following:
- Make sure that the pages your canonical tags point to are very similar to the pages the tags are on - if they're too different, Google may decide they both need to be indexed.
Is it strange that the canonicals that are not the exact duplicates (category filters on ecommerce) are the main ones that are obeyed, the product canonicals (with exact duplicates, excluding changes to the breadcrumbs) are the ones being ignored.
There are pages that are receiving search traffic, but not a massive amount (atleast compared to the true versions of these pages, some of these pages get 10s to 100s of clicks, the canonical pages get thousands/tens of thousands)
Would a viable strategy to try and deal with these by redirecting these non-canonical urls to their canonical format? (short term until we can get issues sorted)
Final query, if Google ignores the canonical is this potentially going to be penalising us? If the answer is believed to be yes then it'll be a higher priority item to deal with.
-
Google can definitely choose to ignore the canonical tag, especially if they think that the page in question is a better solution to a query. I agree with the other respondents that the best possible solution would be to fix this at a code level, so the duplicate content isn't an issue on your site anymore. In the meantime, some things to try:
- Make sure that your internal hierarchy makes the canonical versions more important than the duplicate versions, i.e. they appear farther up in your site nav and have more internal links pointing to them.
- Try building some external links to those pages as well, where you can.
- Make sure that the pages your canonical tags point to are very similar to the pages the tags are on - if they're too different, Google may decide they both need to be indexed.
Are any of the duplicate pages receiving organic search traffic? If not, it may be that Google has indexed them but understands they're not as important. Again, though, the best possible solution would be to fix this at a code level.
-
Sent an email, have you received it?
-
Hey Tom,
Thanks will check it out on Deep crawl hope to find out what is going on.
Tom
-
Hi Tom,
I use Moz, Screaming Frog and this canonical checker: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/canonical/dcckfeohihhlbeobohobibjbdobjbhbo?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog I'm sure that these canonicals are set up correctly.
I will send you an email to the email you have included on your profile.
Thanks,
Tom
-
It sounds to me like your problem is your CMS and your inability to access Google Webmaster tools. If you're going off of Google analytics, that's not going to tell you entire story. Use Moz, Deep Crawl, or screaming frog to determine other or not your canonicals are set up correctly.
It is possible that they're being blocked I some code error. And not being picked up by Googlebot.
Please run your site through the tools suggested and let me know if you need help in the form of somebody to run those tools for you I am willing to add that it is a code error, not Google deciding to ignore properly set up canonicals.
Google Analytics will show you whenever somebody has clicked on it does not mean that the bot is following that URL.
Without seeing more I really couldn't tell you much more unfortunately. If you can private message me with your domain if you'd like and I will check it out.
Hope this helps,Tom
Tom
-
Thank you for your responses. Hopefully someone who may have experienced this before will be able to contribute. It seems there's very little in this area about the potential impacts.
-
I believe you could be at risk of duplicate content issues. If it were my client, I'd definitely consider this a code-red issue and attack it from all possible angles.
-
Yep clean URLs there.
So, do you believe that Google ignoring these canonicals is something we should be worried about? (Basically setting a high priority so development sorts these issues out)
-
Hmm...only other thing I can think of is your that XML sitemap may contain these additional URL strings, but I assume you've already got clean URLs there.
-
Yeah they're definitely right, as a whole our canonicals Google agree with, but there's various batches that Google chooses to ignore.
Unfortunately I don't have access to search console, I have access to GA but that's it. I have to rely on third party tools and other things to try and see the impact. We also have a very restrictive platform which requires things to go through development. So i'm just trying to gauge the seriousness of this issue so that I can do a priority list.
To put the scale into perspective, it looks as if Google is ignoring the majority of our product URLs (thanks to a product recommendation software we use) and is using a different url path. Same with breadcrumbs.
255k indexed pages, ignored canonicals that i've found run to about 15k from just the two above.
-
That's odd, I've never seen a case where Google ignored canonical tags. Since I don't have an example, I have to ask, are your canonical tags in the right place?
Another thing you might try, have you set up parameter handling in Search Console?
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
-
Do Query Strings strip away SEO value?
Hopefully a yes or no answer to this one... If I have a link pointing to my site as below, is the SEO value stripped away because of the query in the URL? https://mysite.co.uk/?WT.mc_id=Test The above mentioned page also has the canonical tag: on it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Is it possible that Google would disregard canonical tag?
Hi all, I was wondering if it is possible for Google to diregard the canonical tag, if for example they decide it is wrongly put based on behavioural data. On the Natviscript Blog's individual blog posts there is a canonical tag for the www.nativescript.org/blog/details (printscreen - http://prntscr.com/e8kz5k). In my opinion it should not be there, and I've put request to our Engineering team for removal some time ago. Interestingly, all blog posts are indexed and got decent amount of organic traffic despite the tag. What do you think? Could it be that Google would disregard the tag based on usage data from let's say GA? Thanks, Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
Canonicalisation query
Hi, I'm in a bit of a quandary. I have this page: https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/ As you can see we have provided filters to only display Fixed rate, Tracker rate, Variable rate, High LTV and HMO products for users. At the moment our canonical tags all point to the main Comparison page, but in order for the search feature to work dynamic urls are created. So for example on the fixed rate page (https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/fixed-rates/) when a user puts in their search criteria the url ends up looking like this: https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/fixed-rates/?PrevTab=HMO&PVal=250000&Amt=100000&Tme=20&SearchId=5508 Now, my quandary is this - should I make the canonical tag for the filtered products (fixed, tracker etc) like this: https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/fixed-rates/ or should I keep it at https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/ ? The comparison page shows all products, ordered by the lowest rate and with a pre-set search, limited to 20 - so not all products will be displayed on the page - and some products (like the high LTV ones) are not displayed on the main comparison landing page anyway... Thanks, Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Do I need to use rel="canonical" on pages with no external links?
I know having rel="canonical" for each page on my website is not a bad practice... but how necessary is it for pages that don't have any external links pointing to them? I have my own opinions on this, to be fair - but I'd love to get a consensus before I start trying to customize which URLs have/don't have it included. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netrepid0 -
Which index page should I canonical to?
Hello! I'm doing a routine clean up of my code and had a question about the canonical tag. On the index page, I have the following: I have never put any thought into which index path is the best to use. http://www.example.com http://www.example.com/ http://www.example.com/index.php Could someone shed some light on this for me? Does it make a difference? Thanks! Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan_Phillips1 -
How accurate and quick does Google pick up on canonical tags?
Hey Peeps! I was just wondering what your experiences are in how fast Google will pick up on canonical tags and how often they use the 'strong hint' in stead of leaving it be? I'm based in The Netherlands and for websites with a decent amount of content and links (where Google indexes new content quickly) they pick up on it within 1-2 weeks. So far they've ignored some canonical tags on one of my websites. Perhaps that's because they don't agree with the degree in which the pages are similar. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StevenvanVessum0 -
Does rel canonical need to be absolute?
Hi guys and gals, Our CMS has just been updated to its latest version which finally adds support for rel=canonical. HUZZAH!!! However, it doesn't add the absolute URL of the page. There is a base ref tag which looks like <base <="" span="">href="http://shop.confetti.co.uk/" /> On a page such as http://shop.confetti.co.uk/branch/wedding-favours the canonical tag looks like rel="canonical" href="/branch/wedding-favours" /> Does Google recognise this as a legitimate canonical tag? The SEOmoz On-Page Report Card doesn't recognise it as such. Any help would be great, Thanks in advance, Brendan.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
Should "View All Products" be the canonical page?
We currently have "view 12" as the default setting when someone arrives to www.mysite.com/subcategory-page.aspx. We have been advised to change the default to "view all products" and make that the canonical page to ensure all of our products get indexed. My concern is that doing this will increase the page load time and possibly hurt rankings. Does it make sense to change all our our subcategory pages to show all the products when someone visits the page? Most sites seem to have a smaller number of products as the default.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt0