Proper use and coding of rel = "canonical" tag
-
I'm working on a site that has pages for many wedding vendors. There are essentially 3 variations of the page for each vendor with only slightly different content, so they're showing up as "duplicate content" in my SEOmoz Campaign. Here's an example of the 3 variations:
http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm/vendorID/4161
http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm?vendorID=4161&action=messageWrite
http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm?vendorID=4161&action=writeReview
Because of this, we placed a rel="canoncial" tag in the second 2 pages to try to fix the problem. However, the coding does not seem to validate in the w3 html validator. I can't say I understand html well enough to understand the error the validator is pointing out.
We also added a the following to the second 2 types of pages
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
Am I employing this tag correctly in this case? Here is a snippet of the code below.
<html> <head> <title>Reviews on Astonishing Event, Inc from Somerset MAtitle> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="[/includes/style.css](view-source:http://www.weddingreportsma.com/includes/style.css)"> <link href="[http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm/vendorID/4161](view-source:http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm/vendorID/4161)" rel="canonical" />
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
<meta name="keywords" content="Astonishing Event, Inc, Somerset Massachusetts, Massachusetts Wedding Wedding Planners Directory, Massachusetts weddings, wedding Massachusetts ">
<meta name="description" content="Get information and read reviews on Astonishing Event, Inc from Somerset MA. Astonishing Event, Inc appears in the directory of Somerset MA wedding Wedding Planners on WeddingReportsMA.com."><script src="[http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js](view-source:http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js)" type="text/javascript">script> <script type="text/javascript"> _uacct = "UA-173959-2"; urchinTracker(); script>
head>
-
Thanks for your help, I get it now!
In addition to your video, I also found a post on Matt Cutts' blog that answers it:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html
-
No, if you remove it page will not show up as canonical element indicates to google that you do not want the page it is paleced on to rank, but it is still able to pass link juice. It is like a 301 redirect, with the difference that users are still able to read the pae content on the sepcific url. Here's a video by Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm9onOGTgeM
-
Are you saying that I should remove the robots noindex tag altogether? If I do that, the pages with the canonical code will still show up in G, right?
If yes, Is there any alterative if I don't want that to happen?
Thanks for the help!
-
The canonical code is ok, but the with robots noindex it won't work. You cannot redirect something that is not indexed. Move robots tag and you shall be fine.
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
-
Best use of Canonical Tag with Mini-Websites
Hello, I was wondering what the best way would be to implement Canonical Tags in kind of a unusual situation. The company I work for creates single property websites for real estate agents. We register a URL such as 123MainSt.com - however through DNS we redirect that to a path. For example: http://www.944milmadadr.com would redirect to: https://www.qwikvid.com/realestate/go/v1/home/?idx=wDg1Gdwt7wnQiR3LMeCx28qPnWTKM0JV If we wanted to rank high in the search engines for our clients: "944 Milmada Dr" - Would it be the best practice to Canonical: http://www.944milmadadr.com ? Thanks in advance for any feedback on this!! Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Qwikvid0 -
Original Source Tag or Canonical Tag for News Publishers?
I have been sourcing content from a news publisher who is my partner for publishing content online. My website deals with sourcing content from a couple of websites. I did use a canonical tag pointing towards the respective syndicated source but I have not seen traffic for those articles. I did some research and found out that Google does have a tag for news publishers which is the "original-source" tag which helps news publishers to give proper credit for their work. Here's a link to the official word by Google" https://news.googleblog.com/2010/11/credit-where-credit-is-due.html Although Google has officially stated that the "syndication-source" tag has been replaced by the "canonical" tag. However, there is no mention about the "original-source" tag.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Starcom_Search
Can I still use the "original-source" tag to syndicate content from my partner site instead of the "canonical" tag? P.S.: The reason why I am not convinced with the use of the canonical tag is because:
1. As per what Google says, duplicate content won't harm my website unless it is spam. (And since we are rightfully content from our partner'website and showcasing it to a larger audience by hosting it on our website as well, we are thereby not indulging in any unethical practices) 2. The canonical tag could possibly hamper my crawl bandwidth issues as it would essentially need the crawler to crawl the whole page to figure out that the canonical is present, post which any possible valuation that my site could have garnered gets lost.3. Moreover, since I am from the news, media and publication industry, content republication is a widely accepted practice and in such cases simply including a link to the original source of the article or using the original source tag should suffice, That being mentioned, I do not want to go ahead without taking a second opinion about this. Kindly help me to resolve this issue.0 -
Value in adding rel=next prev when page 2-n are "noindex, follow"?
Category A spans over 20 pages (not possible to create a "view all" because page would get too long). So I have page 1 - 20. Page 1 has unique content whereas page 2-20 of the series does not. I have "noindex, follow" on page 2-20. I also have rel=next prev on the series. Question: Since page 2-20 is "noindex, follow" doesn't that defeat the purpose of rel=next prev? Don't I run the risk of Google thinking "hmmm….this is odd. This website has noindexed page 2-20, yet using rel=next prev." Even though I do not run the risk, what is my upset in keeping rel=next prev when, again, the pages 2-20 are noindex, follow. thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Canonical tags and product descriptions
I just wanted to check what you guys thought of this strategy for duplicate product descriptions. A sample product is a letter bracelet - a, b, c etc so there are 26 products with identical descriptions. It is going to be extremely difficult to come up with 25 new unique descriptions so with recommendation i'm looking to use the canonical tag. I can't set any to no-index because visitors will look for explicit letters. Because the titles only differ by the letter then a search for either letter bracelet letter a bracelet letter i bracelet will just return results for 'letter bracelet' due to stop words unless the searcher explicitly searches for 'letter "a" bracelet. So I reckon I can make 4 new unique descriptions. I research what are the most popular letters picking 5 from the top (excluding 'a' and 'i'). Equally share the remaining letters between those 5 and with each group set a canonical tag pointing to the primary letter of that group. Does this seem a sensible thing to do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Show wordpress "archive links" on blog?
I here conflicting reports on whether to show wordpress archive links on the blog or not. Some say it is important for viewers to see, others say it is not and creates way too many links. I think both have good points but for SEO purposes, I lean towards removing them. What do Moz users think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomozinator0 -
Meta description Tag who should it be used and what should it describe?
Hi when using the meta description tag how is it best used? what should it describe? should it describe the topic or the services offered i.e should it be a sales message for the services. For example: a page that promotes the benefits of acupuncture whilst pregnant should it describe the page content or the service provided? i.e. acupuncture for pregnancy in Chester or acupuncture can benefit pregnancy because.... thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Canonical tags and GA tracking on premium sub-domain?
Hello! I'm launching a premium service on my site that will deliver two fairly distinct user experiences, but with nearly identical page content across the two. I'm thinking of placing the "upgraded" version on a subdomain, e.g. www.mysite.com, premium.mysite.com. Simple enough. I've run into two obstacles, however: -I don't want the premium site crawled separately, so I'd like to use canonical tags to pull all premium.* back to their www.* parents. --How different can page content be before canonical tags backfire? --Is there any other danger in using canonicals across subdomains like this? -Less importantly: with Google Analytics, if I track against the subdomain my visits will split naturally, and it should generate a second cookie for a new registrant who crosses subdomains. I could also use a visitor-level custom var. Good idea? Bad idea? Thanks! -m
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grumbles0 -
Rel=Canonical URLs?
If I had two pages: PageA about Cats PageB about Dogs If PageA had a link rel=canonical to PageB, but the content is different, how would Google resolve this and what would users see if they searched "Cats" or "Dogs?" If PageA 301 redirected to PageB, (no content in PageA since it's 301 redirected), how would Google resolve this and what would users see if they searched "Cats" or "Dogs?"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | visionnexus0