Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How does a canonical work and is it necessary to also have a no index, follow tag in place?

    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.

    How does a canonical work and is it necessary to also have a no index, follow tag in place?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    5
    1581
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • kbbseo
      kbbseo last edited by

      Across our site, we have canonical tags in place for URLs that contain duplicate content and for URLs without a trailing slash since we are using URLs WITH a trailing slash for all URLs across our site. We also recently added a no index, follow tag to all non-canonical URLs since we noticed a high number of duplicate content URLs in Google Webmaster Tools.

      The first part of my question is: How does a canonical work? Does the robot read the canonical and immediately go to the canonical URL or does it continue to read past the canonical tag and get to the no index, follow tag if there is one present?

      The second part of my question is: Is it necessary to have both a canonical tag and no index, follow tag in place? Or should the canonical tag be sufficient to avoid duplicate content?

      And lastly, if both a canonical tag and no index, follow tag are in place, should they be in a specific order? Canonical tag first then no index, follow tag second or no index, follow tag first then canonical tag second?

      I would appreciate any insight you can give. Thank you!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • kbbseo
        kbbseo last edited by

        Thank you for you responses and advice!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • RyanKent
          RyanKent @john4math last edited by

          Very nice addition John.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • john4math
            john4math last edited by

            Ryan, spot on as always. 🙂

            One other thing, it sounds like some of the canonicals you're placing on pages would be better suited to 301 redirects, like correcting a URL for not having a trailing slash or not.  If you can avoid using canonicals and use 301 redirects instead, that's the preferred method for resolving duplicate content issues.  Canonicals are more for when there are parameters on the URLs, and you can't get away from serving the pages with those parameters.

            RyanKent 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
            • RyanKent
              RyanKent last edited by

              How does a canonical work? Does the robot read the canonical and immediately go to the canonical URL or does it continue to read past the canonical tag and get to the no index, follow tag if there is one present?

              The first thing to understand is the canonical tag is a suggestion, not an order. While a search engine will usually honor the canonical tag, there are instances where Google or other SEs may determine the canonical tag is not being used correctly so they disregard the canonical tag. Based on this understanding, yes the robot will read the entire page regardless of the canonical tag status.

              Is it necessary to have both a canonical tag and no index, follow tag in place? Or should the canonical tag be sufficient to avoid duplicate content?

              The two tags you mention conflict. You would never use both tags on the same page.

              Noindex means you do not wish the page to appear in the search index. The canonical tag means you do wish the content to be included in the search index, but use the canonical URL in the index.

              if both a canonical tag and no index, follow tag are in place, should they be in a specific order?

              The order of meta tags does not matter. If a page was marked with both a canonical tag and a noindex tag, the noindex tag would take effect and the page would not be indexed, so the canonical tag would not have any effect.

              In short, you want to use the canonical tag to resolve duplicate content issues, not the noindex tag.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • JCN-SBWD

                Should I disable the indexing of tags in Wordpress?

                Hi, I have a client that is publishing 7 or 8 news articles and posts each month. I am optimising selected posts and I have found that they have been adding a lot of tags (almost like using hashtags) . There are currently 29 posts but already 55 tags, each of which has its own archive page, and all of which are added to the site map to be indexed (https://sykeshome.europe.sykes.com/sitemap_index.xml). I came across an article (https://crunchify.com/better-dont-use-wordpress-tags/) that suggested that tags add no value to SEO ranking, and as a consequence Wordpress tags should not be indexed or included in the sitemap. I haven't been able to find much more reliable information on this topic, so my question is - should I get rid of the tags from this website and make the focus pages, posts and categories (redirecting existing tag pages back to the site home page)? It is a relatively new websites and I am conscious of the fact that category and tag archive pages already substantially outnumber actual content pages (posts and news) - I guess this isn't optimal. I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks wMfojBf

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCN-SBWD
                0
              • redgatst

                Google Ignoring Canonical Tag for Hundreds of Sites

                Bazaar Voice provides a pretty easy-to-use product review solution for websites (especially sites on Magento): https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/bazaarvoice-conversations-1.html If your product has over a certain number of reviews/questions, the plugin cuts off the number of reviews/questions that appear on the page. To see the reviews/questions that are cut off, you have to click the plugin's next or back function. The next/back buttons' URLs have a parameter of "bvstate....." I have noticed Google is indexing this "bvstate..." URL for hundreds of sites, even with the proper rel canonical tag in place. Here is an example with Microsoft: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zcxT7MRHHREJ:www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-Book/productID.325716000%3Fbvstate%3Dpg:8/ct:r+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us My website is seeing hundreds of these "bvstate" urls being indexed even though we have a proper rel canonical tag in place. It seems that Google is ignoring the canonical tag. In Webmaster Console, the main source of my duplicate titles/metas in the HTML improvements section is the "bvstate" URLs. I don't necessarily want to block "bvstate" in the robots.txt as it will prohibit Google from seeing the reviews that were cutoff. Same response for prohibiting Google from crawling "bvstate" in Paramters section of Webmaster Console. Should I just keep my fingers crossed that Google honors the rel canonical tag? Home Depot is another site that has this same issue: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k0MBLFcu2PoJ:www.homedepot.com/p/DUROCK-Next-Gen-1-2-in-x-3-ft-x-5-ft-Cement-Board-172965/202263276%23!bvstate%3Dct:r/pg:2/st:p/id:202263276+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | redgatst
                1
              • friendoffood

                Removing UpperCase URLs from Indexing

                This search   -  site:www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix gives me this result from Google: Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba
                https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix
                Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. and Google tells me there is another one, which is 'very simliar'.  When I click to see it I get: Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba
                https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/Automotix
                Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. This is because I recently changed my program to redirect all urls with uppercase in them to lower case, as it appears that all lowercase is strongly recommended. I assume that having 2 indexed urls for the same content dilutes link juice.  Can I safely remove all of my UpperCase indexed pages from Google without it affecting the indexing of the lower case urls?  And if, so what is the best way -- there are thousands.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood
                0
              • partnerf

                Canonical tag - but Title and Description are slightly different

                I am building a new SEO site with a "Silo" / Themed architecture.  I have a travel website selling hotel reservations.  I list a hotel page under a city page - example, www.abc.com/Dallas/Hilton.html   Then I use that same property under a segment within the city - example www.abc.com/Dallas/Downtown/Hilton.html, so there are two URLs with the same content Both pages are identical, except I want to customize the Title and Description.  I want to customize the title and description to build a consistent theme - for example the /Downtown/Hilton page will have the words "Near Downtown" in the Title and Description, while the primary city Hilton page will not.  So I have two questions about this. First, is it okay to use a canonical tag if the Title and Description are slightly different?  Everything else is identical. If so, will Google crawl and comprehend the unique Title and Description on the "Downtown" silo? I want Google to see that I have several "supporting" pages to my main landing page(s).  I want to present to Google 5 supporting pages in each silo that each has a supporting keyword theme.  But I'm not sure if Google will consider content of pages that point to a different page using the canonical tag. Please see this supporting example:  http://d.pr/i/aQPv Thanks for your insights. Rob

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | partnerf
                0
              • PeterRota

                Set up a rel canonical

                I have a question. I was wondering, if it was possible to set up a rel canonical. When I can't access the non canonical pages? For example, my site as at www.site.com , but the non cannocail is at site.com is their any way to set thet up without actually edting it at site.com ? Thanks for your help

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterRota
                0
              • mjk26

                tags inside <a>tags - is this bad?</a>

                Hi, I'm currently redesigning my website, and in many places, I've now decided to make links a little bit more obvious for the user, using tags within a <a>tag in order to make the entire block of text clickable.  I was just wondering if this could have a negative impact in the search engines.  My gut feeling is no, since I'm actually improving usability, but I guess it could have an impact on how Google looks at the anchor text?  An example of the HTML is as follows: </a> <a></a> <a></a> [Cristal Night Club Hotels <address>1045 5th Street
                Miami Beach, FL33139</address> 6.4 miles from Miami Dade County Auditorium](http://localhost:8080/frontend/venue-hotels/cristal-night-club-hotels/301022 "Hotels near Cristal Night Club") Thanks for your thoughts and comments, Best wishes Mike

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjk26
                0
              • BeytzNet

                Should I remove Meta Keywords tags?

                Hi, Do you recommend removing Meta Keywords or is there "nothing to lose" with having them? Thanks

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
                0
              • PaulRogers

                Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?

                I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable. The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information. Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue. Any input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Paul

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulRogers
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.