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.
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
-
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page?
Thanks so much!
-Amy
-
You're right. As I was writing my response I realized this is not a good way to go about it. There's really no reason to keep these duplicate content pages. We are pulling content from our database of clients and some of them had been entered more than once in our system, so they created duplicate pages of content and we were thinking we would want the latest version of the client's content which would also contain the active order in our system to be the "main page" but we really just need to remove the older ones instead.
Thanks so much for your help, and I am sorry for the confusion!
-
How similar is the content?
I'm pretty sure you're not going to pass any link juice or authority to the new page using a canonical tag, especially if it has different content; it's just not a great way to fix anything.
Useful if the URL changes depending on how you end up at a destination page, but if you just happen to have 2 different pages about 'widgets' then sharing a canonical tag between them won't do too much.
Can you give me an example of what it is you're actually doing and why you think the pages should be the same? (I'm just not getting the impression they are the same page, sorry if I'm wrong)
-
Thank you for your response, Barry!
So, if we do just change the "official" page and make that page the canonical URL it won't hurt the rankings or anything that the original canonical URL had?
-
Thanks for your response Ian!
We aren't looking to completely replace the page, we just want to change the canonical page to the latest one added and I am looking to find out if that does any sort of damage to whatever linkjuice or ranking the original canonical page has or if it will just transfer. Sorry if it is confusing.
-
If you've made an entirely new page with the same content and it's in the one location and you can change all your links to look there, then 301 the old page to the new page, don't just use rel=canonical.
If you've added a new category, so the old page was, for example, site/colour/product and you now allowed navigation like site/shape/product, then you may want to change the canonical tag if the 'shape' route into the page is the new "official" page.
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
-
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having duplicate content. I mean somewhere google says they will prefer original content & will give preference to them who have original content but this statement contradict when I see Indeed.com as they aggregate content from other sites but still rank higher than original content provider side. How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
On-Page Optimization | Aug 31, 2015, 12:53 PM | vivekrathore0 -
How do I fix duplicate page issue on Shopify with duplicate products because of collections.
I'm working with a new client with a site built on Shopify. Most of their products appear in four collections. This is creating a duplicate content challenge for us. Can anyone suggest specific code to add to resolve this problem. I'm also interested in other ideas solutions, such as "don't use collections" if that's the best approach. I appreciate your insights. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | Apr 7, 2015, 7:31 PM | quiltedkoala0 -
301 Redirect to external site
Hi guys, We have a client who is getting their website redesigned through us. They are discontinuing couple of their services which will not get featured in the new site. They are fairly well ranked for these services and my client wishes to 301 redirect these pages to an external site owned by his friend so that they benefit out of the ranking. The question is: Will my client's website's general ranking get affected due to 301 redirecting to an external site? The external site is not spammy or red-flagged by Google (at the moment, at least). Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | Jan 17, 2015, 10:02 AM | RameshNair
Ramesh Nair0 -
Duplicate content penalty
when moz crawls my site they say I have 2x the pages that I really have & they say I am being penalized for duplicate content. I know years ago I had my old domain resolve over to my new domain. Its the only thing that makes sense as to the duplicate content but would search engines really penalize me for that? It is technically only on 1 site. My business took a significant sales hit starting early July 2013, I know google did and algorithm update that did have SEO aspects. I need to resolve the problem so I can stay in business
On-Page Optimization | May 7, 2014, 12:06 PM | cheaptubes0 -
Canonical URL, cornerstone page and categories
If I want to have a cornerstone "page", can I substitute an actual page with a category archive of posts "page" (that contains many posts containing the target key phrase)? This way, if I make blog posts about a certain topic/ key phrase (example "beach weddings") and add a canonical URL of the category archive page to the individual posts, am I right then to assume google will see the archive page as the cornerstone page (and thereby won't see the individual posts with the same key phrase as competing)?
On-Page Optimization | Aug 10, 2013, 2:24 PM | stephanwb0 -
Percentage of duplicate content allowable
Can you have ANY duplicate content on a page or will the page get penalized by Google? For example if you used a paragraph of Wikipedia content for a definition/description of a medical term, but wrapped it in unique content is that OK or will that land you in the Google / Panda doghouse? If some level of duplicate content is allowable, is there a general rule of thumb ratio unique-to-duplicate content? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | Jul 3, 2011, 11:36 AM | sportstvjobs0 -
Creating New Pages Versus Improving Existing Pages
What are some things to consider or things to evaluate when deciding whether you should focus resources on creating new pages (to cover more related topics) versus improving existing pages (adding more useful information, etc.)?
On-Page Optimization | May 28, 2011, 11:22 PM | SparkplugDigital0 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | Jun 2, 2013, 5:08 PM | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5