Ref = Canonical
-
Does it make sense to use the Canonical statement on pages on your web site that already have the correct URL. Or, should I ask, "Does it do any harm?"
-
Thanks for the speedy response Streamline,
We have just rewritten our web site using a directory structure, rather than having all of the HTML pages in the root folder, and used rel=canonical on all pages, because we were/are really worried about our (fairly good) rankings being negatively impacted.
We have also used rel=canonical in the redirect pages, as we believed that this was an appropriate use of of the 'tag.'
PS
(Sorry about the earlier 'Ref' typo)
-
It doesn't do any harm and in fact, I would recommend using canonical tags just in case some people access your site via a link that has parameters in the URL, such as www.yoursite.com/?utm_campaign=twitter, etc. The canonical tag will ensure that the search engines are always aware about indexing the correct URL.
Also, it's important to note that the proper syntax is rel="canonical" and not ref="canonical".
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
-
Canonicals
I dynamically generated pages using rewrite functions in wordpress (new-york, san-diego, san-francisco). All these pages look the same but with different content. yoast (seo wordpress plugin) was unaware of this and set canonicals up relating to the wordpress page used as the template page for the dynamic pages (City_home_page). so all these pages had the canonical https://dinnerdancecruises.com/City_Home_Page. using search console, i saw google indexed my site, looked at all these dynamically created pages (which is about 30 pages) and took them all in as duplicate pages. this happen sometime in april or may. I fixed this problem and set unique canonicals up for each dynamically created page. but now google is not crawling them for some reason. im not sure why its been months and these pages are not indexed. i thought to myself is it because these links end up on multiple pages? sort of like having "terms of agreement" link at the footer. every single page has that terms of agreement link. does google look at those links as duplicates and not index the page at all. this is where my issue lies. i need google to crawl regularly and see those pages with their new, unique canonicals and re-index them correctly. but it seems to save cpu resources, google feels once a thief always a thief. i could be wrong but this is why i need your suggestion. thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | bobperez7360950 -
One more question about rel=canonical
I'm still trying to wrap my head around rel=canonical and its importance. Thanks to the community, I've been able to understand most of it. Still, I have a couple of very specific questions: I share certain blog posts on the Huffington Post. Here's an example: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/cedric-lizotte/munich-travel-guide_b_13438956.html - Of course I post these on my blog as well. Here: http://www.continentscondiments.com/things-munich-classics/ - Obviously the HuffPo has a huge DA, and I'll never match it. However the original post is mine, on my blog, and not on the HuffPo. They wont - obviously - add a rel=canonical just for me and for the sake of it, they have a million other things to do. QUESTION: Should I add a rel=canonical to my own site pointing to the post on the HuffPost? What would be the advantage? Should I just leave this alone? I share blog posts on Go4TravelBlog too. Example: http://www.go4travelblog.com/dallmayr-restaurant-munich/ - but, once again, the original post is on one of my blogs. In this case, it's on another blog of mine: http://www.thefinediningblog.com/dallmayr-restaurant-in-munich/ QUESTION: Well it's pretty much the same! Should I beg Go4TravelBlog to add a rel=canonical pointing to mine? If they refuse, what do I do? Would it be better to add a rel=canonical from my site to theirs, or do I fight it out and have a rel=canonical pointing to my own post? Why? Thanks a million for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | cedriklizotte0 -
What does Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical mean?
I'm a newb and see this on my report and I don't understand what it means. Any help?
On-Page Optimization | | smartapps0 -
Is Rel=Canonical the answer???
Hey Mozzers, Can you help me with something please. I have some important content going live next week for a client. We work on there blog optimisation and this piece of content is going live on both the blog and parent site. The parent site has huge DA in comparions to the blog. I want to get the traffic directed to the blog and get the blog ranking - bare in mind the content is exactly the same so it is dupe. If I want to get the blog ranking above the parent site and to direct the traffic here is a cross domain Rel=Canonical the answer? Has anyone else had this issue? Thanks Bush
On-Page Optimization | | Bush_JSM0 -
Canonical tag?
I have an e-commerce website and the query strings of the URL's are causing duplicate content/titles. I'm thinking of adding a site-wide canonical tag which should fix them all. Any other ideas of making it neater or better?
On-Page Optimization | | KarlBantleman0 -
Disappearing Rel=Canonical Code
Hi, I've been getting a lot of rel=canonical warnings from seomoz. I went into the original pages and pasted in plain text the following code: link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/blog/my-awesome-blog-post"< (the > are reversed). After a few crawls I couldn't see any effect from posting the code. When I went and checked again, it didn't stay in the wysiwyg editor. It disappeared! We are using Drupal 6. Could someone tell me what code I should be pasting? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OTSEO0 -
Canonical URL problem
On page analysis wanted me to add a canonical url tag. However I added then re ran the on page analysis and it came up with an error. What is the proper way to add a canonical url tag in the head of an index page? ie. add a canonical tag to www.hompeage.com/index.html would it be ? Or should I ignore this for a home page? Because I add it then run the analysis again and get this? Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Canonical URL</dt> <dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/index.html"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd> <dd>So do I add it or not? If I don't I get a lower page rating if I take it off I get a higher page rating with room for improvement. </dd> </dl>
On-Page Optimization | | ENSO0 -
Does it matter if a rel = "canonical" element is added to the beginning or the end of a URL?
I am curious to know if adding a rel = "canonical" tag to the end of a link element will affect its purpose?
On-Page Optimization | | Sharecare0