Canonical and Alternate Advice
-
At the moment for most of our sites, we have both a desktop and mobile version of our sites. They both show the same content and use the same URL structure as each other. The server determines whether if you're visiting from either device and displays the relevant version of the site.
We are in a predicament of how to properly use the canonical and alternate rel tags. Currently we have a canonical on mobile and alternate on desktop, both of which have the same URL because both mobile and desktop use the same as explained in the first paragraph.
Would the way of us doing it at the moment be correct?
-
That would normally be the case but not tonight.
LOL, I am picking up a lot of the UK Q&A I will be at BrightonSEO and search love London if any of you guys will be in the area I'd love to grab a pint?
sincerely,
Thomas
-
The reason we answered 'quickly' by the way is because we are in the UK - you were still in bed lol!
-
There is only ONE URL that is the point.
If they share the same URL then you only have one page of code so ONE canonical
Regards
Nigel
-
Sorry Nigel
was not trying to make this more complicated was just trying to make sure that we were all on the same page.
FYI if you need a method of adding the rel canonical to your website quickly you can use Google tag manager or if you want to add to the header
https://support.stackpath.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001445283-EdgeRules-Adding-a-Canonical-Header
-
So a self referencing canonical on both mobile and desktop versions of the site, regardless if they chuck out two version with the same content?
-
Hi JH
I'm sure Thomas means well with his multiple complicated posts but all of this is totally unnecessary.
Both sites are serving the same URL
You can't put a rel=alternative because there is nothing to point to.
Just put a self-referencing canonical. I said that 2 hours ago!
That is all.
Regards Nigel
-
Use a self-referencing canonical
https://blog.seoprofiler.com/google-recommend-self-referencing-canonical-tags/
Please let me know if you want me to remove the image below?
you can use this one if needed http://bseo.io/c1vMSv
-
I've been told to pass on a URL, thanks for your help Thomas!
-
Hey man I understand is a big deal
could you do me a huge favor and run your site through screaming frog SEO spider send me a couple of pages with the domains whited out so I can tell you 100% what to do in this situation because I am basing this on what you have told me and honestly I would like to look at what a tool can show me and that will tell me what I need to do.
Or you can tell me if the mobile version of the site hit's Google's index yes or no?
respectfully,
Tom
-
So both mobile and desktop require a self referencing canonical(in both headers)?
Sorry for the questions, just need to make sure! It's a very touchy subject!
-
The single self-referencing URL will work.
-
What URLs are you using with the “alternate” tag on?
You said
”1. We have multiple brand sites, that have a similar setup. They all have mobile and desktop versions of the sites running on the same URL, both of which show the same content.2. The server determines whether if you're on a desktop or mobile devices using the header information, and points the user to the site relevant files for the given device.”
thats Dynamic serving same URL
Dynamic serving is a setup where the server responds with different HTML (and CSS) on the same URL depending on which user agent requests the page (mobile, tablet, or desktop).
that would NOT give you the mobile or m.example.com & www.example.com different URLs
**But If you do have a different m.example.com & www.example.com URLs you should use this code or XML site maps **
for different URLs use this:
Annotations in the HTML
On the desktop page (http://www.example.com/page-1), add the following annotation:
<linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<="" span="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only>
On the mobile page (http://m.example.com/page-1), the required annotation should be:
<linkrel="canonical"href="http: www.example.com="" page-1"=""></linkrel="canonical"href="http:>
This rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.
Or
Annotations in sitemaps
We support including the rel="alternate"annotation for the desktop pages in sitemaps like this:
<urlsetxmlns="http: www.sitemaps.org="" schemas="" sitemap="" 0.9"<="" span="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<loc>http://www.example.com/page-1/</loc>
<xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<="" span="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"/></xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only></urlsetxmlns="http:>You should have the same URL on mobile and desktop
You should have the same rel canonical tag on your URLs unless and this is a big unless you're talking about using Google AMP?
If the URL you want to be indexed is the same URL point everything to that URL if that makes it easier to understand.
respectfully,
Tom
-
Just to confirm, are we suppose to have a canonical on desktop and mobile or just desktop?
This would mean removing the alternate?
Want to confirm everything before iterating this across to others.
We are not using AMP, just a standard site setup.
-
Unless you are using AMP?
Then you would add
Linking pages with
In order to solve this problem, we add information about the AMP page to the non-AMP page and vice versa, in the form of tags in the .
Add the following to the non-AMP page:
<link rel="amphtml" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/amp/document.html">
And this to the AMP page:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/full/document.html">
are you using AMP pages?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
https://www.ampproject.org/docs/fundamentals/discovery
I hope that helps you if not please let me know.
Respectfully,
Tom
-
Cool, that's what I thought when I heard your description I just wanted to be very thorough because sometimes you get very little information and I appreciate you letting me know that.
dynamic serving URLs are identical to each other so you should have a self-referencing canonical tag because the URL does not change the real canonical tag just decides what should be in the index and the same URL.
You're Rel canonical should be something like this example below
Example URL https://www.example.com/example-url/
because the end URL is the same and URL that you want to be indexed in Google you want to be certain that you have a self-referencing URL to prevent query strings and other things like that and you do not need to point a URL to an identical URL you just need a self-referencing canonical if that makes sense.
See: https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/
I hope that is of help,
Tom
-
Hi,
I can't give off too much information as it's not my call, but I can answer your questions without mentioning the brands.
1. We have multiple brand sites, that have a similar setup. They all have mobile and desktop versions of the sites running on the same URL, both of which show the same content.
2. The server determines whether if you're on a desktop or mobile devices using the header information, and points the user to the site relevant files for the given device.
3. Our sites would quite clearly fit in the dynamic serving category.
We have 301 redirects on none www to www and http to https.
-
This is the correct solution!
-
The URLs are identical it is just the content that is served that may be slightly different.
Since you can only specify one canonical for each URL it makes no difference. Just self-reference and that is it.
If you had to different URLs then it would be an issue where you woudl need a rel=alternative so there is nothing to worry about.
Regards
Nigel
-
You guys are fast I was going to answer this and had to do some other things but let me weigh in on couple things.
as you said
“We are in a predicament of how to properly use the canonical and alternate rel tags**. Currently we have a canonical on mobile and alternate on desktop, both of which have the same URL because both mobile and desktop use the same as explained in the first paragraph.”**
so what you’re saying is that you have a dynamic site so you don’t need to add “alternate"media” tags to the site.
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/dynamic-serving
As it is not immediately apparent in this setup that the site alters the HTML for mobile user agents (the mobile content is "hidden" when crawled with a desktop user agent), it’s recommend that the server send a hint to request that Googlebot for smartphones also crawl the page, and thus discover the mobile content. This hint is implemented using the Vary HTTP header.
**you don’t need this **
Annotations in the HTML
On the desktop page (
http://www.example.com/page-1
), add the following annotation:<code dir="ltr"><linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<br="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only></code>
On the mobile page (
http://m.example.com/page-1
), the required annotation should be:<code dir="ltr"><linkrel="canonical"href="http: www.example.com="" page-1"=""></linkrel="canonical"href="http:></code>
This
rel="canonical"
tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.Annotations in sitemaps
We support including the
rel="alternate"
annotation for the desktop pages in sitemaps like this:<code dir="ltr"><urlsetxmlns="http: www.sitemaps.org="" schemas="" sitemap="" 0.9"<br="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <url><loc>http://www.example.com/page-1/</loc> <xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<br="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"/></xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only></url></urlsetxmlns="http:></code>
The required
rel="canonical"
tag on the mobile URL should still be added to the mobile page's HTML.**to be sure **
Are you willing to share your domain with us? Or one domain?
-
We're talking about multiple websites that all have the identical site structure or at least mobile and desktop site structure?
-
Your server is making the change for you?
-
Would you be kind enough to install this plug-in on chrome in order for you to show a couple examples of the canonical and the URL?
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/portents-seo-page-review/babgchcegnkbiojmdpnoilficladccfm?hl=en-US
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-redirect-trace/nnpljppamoaalgkieeciijbcccohlpoh?hl=en
In addition, would you be kind enough to run your site through the two tools here ( 100% free and very easy to use)
If you would not mind doing this and sending screenshots it would mean a lot to us and getting your canonical's straightened out.
screenshots https://snag.gy/ then upload to http://imgur.com/
everything is on the same server I'm assuming?
Of the three below how would you categorize your site?
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/dynamic-serving
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/responsive-design
Respectfully,
Tom
-
-
Would this mean we need canonical only on desktop or mobile site?
-
You are right - you could only use teh rel=alternate if there was an m. version or similar
Regards
Nigel
-
The self referencing canonical advice was solid and I 100% agree with it. The rel=alternate advice, I felt would cause problems (IMO). But as we all know, fiddly issues like this are highly subjective
-
Then there is no problem simply putting a self-referencing canonical. There is in effect no mobile version as there is a single URL so no need for a rel=alternate.
It's an even easier solution. Well, there isn't a problem in the first place.
rel=alternate is only necessary if you have two different URLs! The fact they are the same takes away the problem.
Regards
Nigel
-
Your problem is that you have two different sites loading on the same URL. If you are returning both the mobile and desktop / laptop site on the same URL, you would be expected to be using responsive design. In-fact, you may have re-invented another different way to implement responsive design which is probably, slightly less fluid yet slightly more efficient :')
Since your mobile and desktop pages both reside on exactly the same URL, I'd test the page(s) with this tool (the mobile friendly tool) and this tool (the page-speed insights tool). If Google correctly views your site as mobile friendly, and if within PageSpeed insights Google is correctly differentiating between the mobile and desktop site versions (check the mobile and desktop tabs) then both URLs should canonical to themselves (self referencing canonical) and no alternate tag should be used or deployed. Google will misread the alternate tag, which points to itself - as an error. That tag is to be used when your separate mobile site (page) exists on a separate URL, like an 'm.' subdomain or something like that
Imagine you are Googlebot. You are crawling in desktop mode, load the desktop URL version and find that the page says, it (itself) is also the mobile page. You'd get really confused
Check to see whether your implementation is even supported by Google using the tools I linked you to. If it is, then just use self referencing canonical tags and do not deploy alternate tags (which would make no sense, since both versions of the site are on the same URL). When people build responsive sites (same source code on the same URL, but it's adaptive CSS which re-organises the contents of the page based upon viewport widths) - they don't use alternate tags, only canonicals
Since your situation is more similar to responsive design (from a crawling perspective) than it is to separate mobile site design, drop the alt
-
The problem with this is, where you say "corresponding mobile URL" - there isn't one as OP has stated that, two different source codes (pages) can be rendered on the same URL depending upon the user's screen size / user-agent (however they are detecting mobile, and serving different pages)
-
Hi JH
This is very straightforward.
Use the following annotations:
- On the desktop page, add a rel=”alternate” tag pointing to the corresponding mobile URL. This helps Googlebot discover the location of your site’s mobile pages.
- On the mobile page, add a link rel=”canonical” tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL.
It is that simple and doing this will not create duplicate content
More here: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
Regards Nigel
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
-
Cached Alternate URL appearing as base page
Hi there, I'm currently targeting Australia and the US for one of my web-pages. One of my web-pages begin with a subdomain (au.site.com) and the other one is just the root domain (site.com). After searching the website on Australian Google and checking the description and title, it keeps the US ones (i.e. root domain) and after checking the cached copy, it was cached earlier today but it is displayed exactly as the American website when it is supposed to be the Australian one? In the url for the caching it appears as au.site.com while displaying the American page's content. Any ideas why? Thanks, Oliver
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oliverkuchies0 -
SEO advice with having a blog on sub domain.
Righto, so: I've been working on our company website www.nursesfornurses.com.au which is built on .asp which is a real pain because the site is built so messy and on a very dated CMS which means I have to go back to the dev every time I want to make a change. We've made the decision to move the site over to Wordpress in stages. So, (and I hope logically), i've started by making them a proper blog with better architecture to start targeting industry related keywords. I had to put it on a sub domain as the current hosting does not support Wordpress http://news.nursesfornurses.com.au/Nursing-news/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 9868john
The previous blog is here: http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/blog Its not live yet, so I'm just looking for SEO advice or issues I might encounter by having the blog on a sub domain. In terms of user experience, I realise that there needs a clearer link back to the main website, I'm just trying to work out the best way to do it... Any advice / criticism is greatly welcomed. Thanks0 -
Ecommerce: remove duplicate product pages or use rel=canonical
Say we have a white-widget that is in our white widget collection and also in our wedding widget collection. Currently, we have 3 different URLs for that product (white-widgets/white-widget and wedding-widgets/white-widget and all-widgets/white-widget).We are automatically generating a rel=canonical tag for those individual collection product pages that canonical the original product page (/all-widgets/white-widget). This guide says that is the structure Zappos uses and says "There is an elegance to this approach. However, I would re-visit it today in light of changes in the SEO world."
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | birchlore
I noticed that Zappos, and many other shops now actually just link back to the parent product page (e.g. If I am in wedding widget section and click on the widget, I go to all-products/white-widget instead of wedding-widgets/white-widget).So my question is:Should we even have these individual product URLs or just get rid of them altogether? My original thought was that it would help SEO for search term "white wedding widget" to have a product URL wedding-widget/white-widget but we won't even be taking advantage of that by using rel=canonical anyway.0 -
How far can I push rel=canonical?
My plan: 3 sites with identical content, yet--wait for it--for every article whose topic is A, the pages on all three sites posting that article will have a rel=canonical tag pointing to Site A. For every article whose topic is B, the pages on all three sites posting that article will have a rel=canonical tag pointing to Site B. So Site A will have some articles about topics A, B, and C. And for pages with articles about A, the rel=canonical will point to the page it's on. Yet for pages with articles about B, the rel=canonical will point to the version of that article on site B. Etc. I have my reasons for planning this, but you can see more or less that I want each site to rank for its niche, yet I want the users at each site to have access to the full spectrum of articles in the shared articles database without having to leave a given site. These would be distinct brands with distinct Whois, directory listings, etc. etc. The content is quality and unique to our company.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheEspresseo0 -
Need advice for indexing a multilingual website
We are in the process of creating a Spanish subdomain of our website. I want to know what needs to be done in regard to meta tags, sitemap.xml and robots.txt so that Google and Bing will index both website properly and not causing the web page on the English site to lost rank. Our English site is www.mydomain.com with the Spanish site being es.mydomain.com We are planning to put a button or link on both sites so that visitors can switch between both sites. The two sites are similar but not all pages are mirror images.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Qualbe-Marketing-Group0 -
Multilingual sites: Canonical and Alternate tag implementation question
Hello, I would like some clarification about the correct implementation of the rel="alternate" tag and the canonical tag. The example given at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 recommends implementing the canonical tag on all region specific sub-domains, and have it point to the www version of the website Here's the example given by Google. My question is the following. Would this technique also apply if I have region specific sites site local TLD. In other words, if I have www.example.com, www.example.co.uk, www.example.ca – all with the same content in English, but prices and delivery options tailored for US, UK and Canada residents, should I go ahead and implement the canonical tag and alternate tag as follows: I am a bit concerned about canonicalizing an entire local TLD to the .com site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Amiee0 -
Canonical Tags & Search Bots
Does anyone know for sure if search engine bots still crawl links on a page whose canonical tags are set to a different page? So in short, would it be similar to a no-index follow? Thanks! -Margarita
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MargaritaS0 -
Need advice on local search optimization
HI all, I've found myself in a puzzling position and not quite sure which direction to push my current SEO project so if anyone who's done this particular type of SEO can offer some suggestions I'd be eternaly grateful. I am currently working on a project for a Law Firm based in New Jersey. Lets say the town they are in is Garfield. What I really want to try and achieve is see them appearing in the number one spot whenever anyone within Garfield or the immediate area searches for a lawyer relating to the individuals need. E..g searches like "personal injury lawyers", "real estate lawyer". The problem is I can see how I can easily make it to the number one position if people are specific and enter garfield in the search term but in reality they wouldn't be doing that. An additional problem is that peoples ISP's in garfield aren't located in Garfield, in some cases they're as far away as Newark so when they're doing a search for 'real estate lawyer' google is bringing up results for the Newark based firms. It seems using tools like market samurai to look at the traffic and competition is proving useless as searches like the ones I'm doing for local business are so closely tied to the ISP location I don't really know whether to target broad range searches like "Real Estate Lawyer", or to be really specific and include the town name in my page titles, H1 tags etc... I hope I put across my dilemma and someone can help me chose which direction to go in.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davebrown19750