Interesting Cross Domain Canonical Quirk...
-
We recently ran cross domain canonicals for 2 of our websites. What's interesting is that when I do a search for ""site:domain1.com "product name"" the Title in the SERPs uses the Domain Name from the site the page has been canonicaled to.
So the title for Domain1 (for the search term above) looks like this: Product Name | Keywords | Domain 2
Interesting quirk. Ha anyone else seen this?
-
The SERP did link to the correct (canonical target) domain. If the canonical tag is on domain1.com/product-a, the SERP was correctly pointed at domain2.com/product-a.
Because the page on Domain 1 is supposed to be de-indexed, I was expecting not to see the page at all. This is my first crack at cross domain canonicals. It's an interesting way for Google to handle it.
BTW, from a rankings perspective, the cross domain canonicals were extremely productive. Domain #2 got some huge rankings increases.
I've been tracking the results closely. I should publish the results when I get a chance. The most important result is that the keywords (+/-700) associated with the canonicals improved by an average of 22 positions over the higher position prior to the canonicals being implemented.
What I mean by that is for a keyword (ex: "widgets"), Domain 1 was Ranked 46, and Domain 2 was ranked 57, our average improvement was to position 24, which is 22 positions better than the higher ranked domain (in this case, Domain 1).
Rankings improvements for keywords already on page 1 or Page 2 increased by an average of 2.5 positions over the better ranked domain.
What was really cool was that when we canonicaled in the "wrong" direction, where the keyword ranked higher on the domain that was getting the canonical tag, the results were indistinguishable from the results where we canonicaled in the "correct" direction.
So, in this case, if a keyword ranked higher on domain1.com, and we canonicaled to domain2.com, the average ranking increases (from the higher ranking position) were almost identical to using canonicals in the "correct" direction (from the lower ranking position).
These are both ecommerce sites with DAs of +/-40.
What was also interesting is that Google accepted the canonicals in cases where our product descriptions were markedly different.
-
What was the result you were expecting?
-
Interesting quirk. Ha anyone else seen this?
Working as intended
As Laura said, when you canonical (a) to (b), you expect (b) to become the dominant page / site.
-Andy
-
That's the way it should work. When you set up a cross domain canonical from a URL on domain 1 to a URL on domain 2, you are telling the search engine that you want the content on site 2 to be indexed rather than the same content on site 1. The page content on domain 1 is probably not in the index for search results anymore, but the canonical tag ties the content on the two domains together.
In your example, does the search results link to the content on domain 2? That's what I would expect.
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
-
Domains and Domain Authority
Looking for some advice 🙂 I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate. How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO. thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Redirecting a Few URLs to a New Domain
We are in the process of buying the blog section of a site. Let's say Site A is buying Site B. We have taken the content from Site B and replicated it on Site A, along with the exact url besides the TLD. We then issued 301 redirects from Site B to Site A and initiated a crawl on those original Site B urls so Google would understand they are now redirecting to Site A. The new urls for Site A, with the same content are now showing up in Google's index if we do a site:SiteA.com search on the big G. Anyone have any experience with this as to how long before Site A urls should replace Site B urls in the search results? I undestand there may be a ranking difference and CTR difference based on domain bias, etc... I'm just asking if everything goes as planned and there isn't a huge issue, does the process take weeks or months?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoaustin0 -
Pagination parameters and canonical
Hello, We have a site that manages pagination through parameters in urls, this way: friendly-url.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
friendly-url.html?p=2
friendly-url.html?p=3
... We've rencently added the canonical tag pointing to friendly-url.html for all paginated results. In search console, we have the "p" parameter identified by google.
Now that the canonical has been added, should we still configure the parameter in search console, and tell google that it is being use for pagination? Thank you!0 -
Canonical code set up correctly?
Please let me know if this makes sense. I have a very limited knowledge of technical SEO but I am almost positive that my web developer did something wrong. I have a wordpress blog and he did add canonical code to some of the pages. However he directs the site to the same URL! Does this mean that the canonical code is setup incorrectly and actually harming my SEO performance. Also if I have one webpage with just the first paragraph of a blog post I wrote and a completely seperate page for the blog post itself, could this be considered duplicate content? Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DR700950 -
Subdomain and root domain
Hey Everyone, our page has multiple domains and I'm wondering how it affects search rankings today. I saw some stuff from almost a year ago, but I'm not sure if something has changed. We currently have our root domain "www.xyz.com" and started moving some pages over to a different sub-domain "web.xyz.com" because of usability and ease of adjusting content. How much will this affect our seo? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh1230 -
Circular Canonical/Redirect
My client's site has an issue (see below) and I'm wondering how much it could be affecting crawlability. Has anyone seen a major rankings bump after fixing something like this? 1. In each page the rel=canonical is pointing to the http version of the page while the http version is redirecting to the https version. Basically, a circular redirect-canonical loop is occurring.2. The sitemap.xml is also referring to the http version of the pages rather than the https.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elenaroi0 -
Should we move to a new domain??
Working with a company that is considering moving to a new domain and wanted some advice.They have 2 domains (they own both) and one is a shorter version of the other. The current domain is over 10 years old and has a domain authority score of 80. It is 9 characters long. The new domain (which they also own) has a DA score of 43 and is only 3 characters long. The debate is as much about branding as anything but there is a concern on how it will affect search. I was hoping for so advice and any pitfalls others may have experienced. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2comarketing0 -
Canonical, 301 or code a workaround?
Hi, Recently I've been trying to tackle an issue on one of my websites. I have a site with around 400 products and 550 pages total. I've been pruning some weaker pages and pages with shallow content, and it's been working really well. My current issue is this: There are about 20 store brands of 6 products on my site that each have their own page. They are identical products just re-branded. Writing content for each of these pages has been difficult, as it's a fairly dry product too. So I have around 120 pages of dry content that is unique but not much different from one another. I want to consolidate but I am not sure how yet. Here is what I am thinking: 1. 301 - I pick one product page as the master, 301 all the other duplicate products to it and then make one page of great content that encompasses all of them. If the 301 juice gets diluted over time I might miss out on some long tails, but I could also gain a lot more from a great content page with 500+ words of really good content as opposed to pages with 150-250 words of just so so content. 2. Canonical - Similar to above. I pick a master page and canonical the other pages to it. Then I could use the great content on all the pages, and still have pages for the specific products. The pages might not show up in search engines but would still be searchable on my site. 3. Coded solution - In my CMS I could always make a workaround where the products still appear on the brands page (just their name with a link to the product page) but all the links direct to a master page. I realize all the solutions are fairly similar, although I am not sure which is ideal. Option 3 is the most expensive/time consuming but it would drop my page total down to around 450 pages. For a while now (dating back to before Panda) I've been trying to get rid of the low quality and outdated product pages so I could focus on the more popular and active pages. Dropping my page total would also help in the SEO efforts as the sheer volume of pages that need links right now is high, and obviously the less pages I have the more time I can spend on each page (content and link building). So what do you think? Should I do any of the 3, a combination of the 3 or something different? Cheers, Vinnie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vforvinnie0