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.
Broken canonical link errors
-
Hello,
Several tools I'm using are returning errors due to "broken canonical links". However, I'm not too sure why is that.
Eg.
Page URL: domain.com/page.html?xxxx
Canonical link URL: domain.com/page.html
Returns an error.Any idea why? Am I doing it wrong?
Thanks,
G -
Great, thanks for your note Paul, I will filter through as you suggest!
-
I would us a different
rel="canonical" only url for the canonical & kee the microdata link as just a link.
I agree it is probably Just the tool but from what I can see mixing microdata & the canonical is not the best way to go.
<link rel="canonical" href="http: example.com="" "=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:>
you want a free way to test up to 500 pages https://screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ like Paul said any tool can be wrong but it looks like you should not mix the canonical something the end Users can click on
tom
-
Your understanding of canonical tags is correct, GhillC.
If Tools are showing errors for those canonical tags you've listed, then the tools are wrong.
As long as the protocol and subdomain prefix (or not) exactly match and the only difference is the exclusion of the parameters (the "?" and the stuff after it) then the canonicals are correct.
Any tool's reports have to be filtered through your own understanding and knowledge. They often get things wrong. That's on eof the key differences between experienced SEOs and less-experienced. They kow when to question what an automated tool is telling them. So good on ya for questioning the results!
Paul
-
Thanks both.
Though I do believe that I get a good enough understanding of the canonical tag structure.
What I don't understand is why some SEO tools are returning an error with few of these tags.Here is the page URL:
https://www.domain.com/ae/products/shopby/product-type-accessories.html?___store=en_aeAnd here is the canonical tag that returns the error:
As per your comment, I want the URL without the query string to rank and the traffic associated to the URL above to benefit "accessories.html".
At first I thought it was due to "itemprop" which technically should not be combined with a rel attribute (source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31621308/itemprop-and-rel-attributes-on-same-element)
But since all the pages of the website I'm working on contains canonical tags with both elements and only a handful of them returns a canonical tag error, I guess it comes from something else. -
If you need anyone to back up what Roman said he's exactly right.
You need to add the canonical to your site so it is self-referencing I would not add it to any URLs that have parameters/query strings or any URL that you want to be in Google's index.
In your example you show the same page twice I added https:// just to make it a full URL for the example and please do that when you add the canonical's
With the rel canonical, you're telling Google that your parameter is not something you want to rank for
You want https://domain.com/page.html to rank
** not**
**Page URL: https://domain.com/page.html?xxxx **
So as Roman said you would add a rel canonical like this below. Please keep in mind when you add these you must add HTTP or HTTPS depending on what your site is up for as well as www. or non-www. & always use absolute URLs
For example, search crawlers might be able to reach your homepage in all of the following ways:
Cite: https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
More references
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
- https://moz.com/blog/rel-canonical
- https://varvy.com/rel/canonical.html
I hope that helps,
Tom
-
A canonical tag (aka "rel canonical") is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or "duplicate" content appearing on multiple URLs. Practically speaking, the canonical tag tells search engines which version of a URL you want to appear in search results.
So if you have a page such as
www.mywesbite.com you should have a canonical tag on that page like this one
on your headerSo you should check your source code to check if the URL is ok or it's missing
These are some links you should read
Hope this information will answer your question
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
-
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
Should we Nofollow Social Links?
I've been asked the question of whether if we should nofollow all of our social links, would this be a wise thing to do? I'm not exactly getting a clear answer from search results and thought you guys would be best to ask 🙂 Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
Sitemap error in Webmaster tools - 409 error (conflict)
Hey guys, I'm getting this weird error when I submit my sitemap to Google. It says I'm getting a 409 error in my post-sitemap.xml file (https://cleargear.com/post-sitemap.xml). But when I check it, it looks totally fine. I am using YoastSEO to generate the sitemap.xml file. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a big deal? If so, Does anyone know how to fix? Thanks EwTswL4
Technical SEO | | Extima-Christian0 -
Errors In Search Console
Hi All, I am hoping someone might be able to help with this. Last week one of my sites dropped from mid first day to bottom of page 1. We had not been link building as such and it only seems to of affected a single search term and the ranking page (which happens to be the home page). When I was going through everything I went to search console and in crawl errors there are 2 errors that showed up as detected 3 days before the drop. These are: wp-admin/admin-ajax.php showing as response code 400 and also xmlrpc.php showing as response code 405 robots.txt is as follows: user-agent: * disallow: /wp-admin/ allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php Any help with what is wrong here and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated. Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | DaleZon0 -
How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Rel=canonical Weebly
My problem is with my website as it says I have duplicate page titles and contents because of a /index.html. It says the duplicate content is due to the fact that my homepage on my website is www.seacandytackle.com but it is also www.seacandytackle.com/index.html because I use weebly. How can I use the tag to fix this? It won't let me do a 301 redirect because it is a home page. How can I fix this? What code would I have to use and which url? Also it says that I have duplicate page content between http://www.seacandytackle.com/index.html and http://www.seacandytackle.comhttp://www.seacandytackle.com but I don't recall having any page that looks like http://www.seacandytackle.com http://www.seacandytackle.com from weebly. How can I fix this issue as well? Thank you for any help. Step by step implementation would be particularly helpful in using the rel= tags to fix these duplicate issues.
Technical SEO | | SeaCandyTackle0 -
404 crawl errors from "tel:" link?
I am seeing thousands of 404 errors. Each of the urls is like this: abc.com/abc123/tel:1231231234 Everything is normal about that url except the "/tel:1231231234" these urls are bad with the tel: extension, they are good without it. The only place I can find this character string is on each page we have this code which is used for Iphones and such. What are we doing wrong? Code: Phone: <a href="[tel:1231231234](tel:7858411943)"> (123) 123-1234a>
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0 -
Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg
Technical SEO | | glennfriesen1