Canonical Tag Uses Source Title and Meta Data?
-
When optimising a regional same language micro site within a sub folder of a .com it dawned on me that our use of the hreflang and canonical meta elements will render individual elements such as H1 and title obsolete.
As a canonical tag takes the canonical source title and meta right?
It would still have value in optimising localised headings though?
Appreciate any thoughts, suggestions (o:
-
This is a really complex topic and a special case of the canonical tag.. It also doesn't help that Google keeps adjusting their advice. See this thread:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
"When Google discovers a cluster of pages with a single canonical URL, our algorithms will use the title and snippet from the canonical version in our search results. Therefore, it's a good idea not to include region-specific content in the title and meta description tags of the canonical URL. For example, use "Example Widget Inc" instead of "Example Widget USA Inc" or "Example Widget UK"."
So, what about the non-canonical pages? Well, the implication is that, if you use hreflang AND canonical, you'll avoid dupe content problems but the proper pages may rank in the proper regions, even with the canonical tag. In that case, you'd want to include regional variations in the non-canonical META data (for regional searchers). Unfortunately, I haven't seen good data on this yet.
Like Istvan, my gut reaction is to try hreflang first, without the canonical, IF you're not having duplicate content issues or seeing regional variations cross over into inappropriate regions. If you are seeing that, then you'll probably need both.
-
Use only the Hreflang instead of hrefland+canonical combo.
-
This is what we have done, as there are multiple languages and multiple countries.
We are going to use HREFLANG and Canonical, but doesn't this combination mean that titles and meta description from the canonical url is used on each of the duplicated regional sites?
-
Ok,
let's say example.com/us/ is targeted to US and example.com/uk/ is targeted to UK.
If you put a canonical on both that targets to other one, one of them will disappear from Google Index.
What you can do is use only the HREFLANG attribute. And use that to target en-US and en-GB as languages. Maybe that can boost it a little-bit.
I hope that helped,
Istvan
-
I understand what both do, but thanks for the clarification.
I am wondering if when using the canonical to group same language micro-sites say English American and UK the heading elements are localised say:
English title / meta contains : "specialist organisation"
English American title / meta contains: "specialty organization"
Would the cannonical source (the american version) be shown to a UK audience?
Just pondering is all, thanks again Istvan.
-
Hi Wvicary,
I think you miss-understood the canonical tag usage.
After applying the canonical to a page you choose which version of the page will be included in the search index.
For example: you have:
if in the index file you insert the canonical tag, which points to example.com then example.com/index.html will be excluded from the search results.
now HREFLANG: what id does is creates a connection between same content in different languages. For example you have the domain: www.example.com and have three main languages: EN, NL and DE. and you choose to have three different sub-folders for each:
inserting in the header the HREFLANG attribute will help the secondary languages gain reputation and not for localization.
Read through John Doherty's article. He tested quite well the HREFLANG.
Here is the article: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/hreflang-markup-testing/
I hope this helped,
Istvan
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
-
Should I delete all tags and just use my categories to organize content?
My website NorthernCaliforniaHikingTrails.com/blog has 400 or so tags, and it also has an extensive set of categories. I'm thinking about deleting all the tags, but keeping the categories and consolidating them a bit. Is there a significant SEO advantage to having tags in my case? I've seen a few very high-ranking websites actually rank for a tag, but I doubt my site will reach that level. Any help appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | John88990 -
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 | | redgatst1 -
Is it a problem that Google's index shows paginated page urls, even with canonical tags in place?
Since Google shows more pages indexed than makes sense, I used Google's API and some other means to get everything Google has in its index for a site I'm working on. The results bring up a couple of oddities. It shows a lot of urls to the same page, but with different tracking code.The url with tracking code always follows a question mark and could look like: http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example http://www.MozExampleURL.com?another-tracking-examle http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example-3 etc So, the only thing that distinguishes one url from the next is a tracking url. On these pages, canonical tags are in place as: <link rel="canonical<a class="attribute-value">l</a>" href="http://www.MozExampleURL.com" /> So, why does the index have urls that are only different in terms of tracking urls? I would think it would ignore everything, starting with the question mark. The index also shows paginated pages. I would think it should show the one canonical url and leave it at that. Is this a problem about which something should be done? Best... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
HTTPS pages - To meta no-index or not to meta no-index?
I am working on a client's site at the moment and I noticed that both HTTP and HTTPS versions of certain pages are indexed by Google and both show in the SERPS when you search for the content of these pages. I just wanted to get various opinions on whether HTTPS pages should have a meta no-index tag through an htaccess rule or whether they should be left as is.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamie.Stevens0 -
Lowercase VS. Uppercase Canonical tags?
Hi MOZ, I was hoping that someone could help shed some light on an issue I'm having with URL structure and the canonical tag. The company I work for is a distributor of electrical products and our E-commerce site is structured so that our URL's (specifically, our product detail page URL's) include a portion (the part #) that is all uppercase (e.g: buy/OEL-Worldwide-Industries/AFW-PG-10-10). The issue is that we have just recently included a canonical tag in all of our product detail pages and the programmer that worked on this project has every canonical tag in lowercase instead of uppercase. Now, in GWT, I'm seeing over 20,000-25,000 "duplicate title tags" or "duplicate descriptions". Is this an issue? Could this issue be resolved by simply changing the canonical tag to reflect the uppercase URL's? I'm not too well versed in canonical tags and would love a little insight. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GalcoIndustrial0 -
Using Canonical on home page
Our home page has the canonical tag pointing to itself (something from wordpress i understand). Is there any positive or negative affect that anyone is aware of from having pages canonical'ed to themselves?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
How are PDF image alt tags and "subject" field in document properties used for search
Hello, 1. Does google use image alt tags? According to this 2011 document, the answer is no, but I have seen others claiming yes- has google since begun using alt tags for images within PDFs? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pdfs-in-google-search-results.html I am trying to decide if it is worth updating existing PDFs with alt tags for images for the purpose of SEO. 2. How does Google use the "Subject" field in document properties for a PDF? Should it be used as a description field for the document, similar to a meta description? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | winstoncho0 -
301 Redirect or Canonical Tag or Leave Them Alone? Different Pages - Similar Content
We currently have 3 different versions of our State Business-for-Sale listings pages - the versions are: **Version 1 -- Preferred Version: ** http://www.businessbroker.net/State/California-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx Title = California Business for Sale Ads - California Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker Version 2: http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-California.aspx Title = California Business for Sale | 3124 California Businesses for Sale | BusinessBroker.net Version 3: http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_california.ihtml Title = California Businesses for Sale at BusinessBroker.net - California Business for Sale While the page titles and meta data are a bit different, the bulk of the page content (which is the listings rendered) are identical. We were wondering if it would make good sense to either (A) 301 redirect Versions 2 and 3 to the preferred Version 1 page or (B) put Canonical Tags on Versions 2 and 3 labeling Version 1 as the preferred version. We have this issue for all 50 U.S. States -- I've mentioned California here but the same applies for Alabama through Wyoming - same issue. Given that there are 3 different flavors and all are showing up in the Search Results -- some on the same 1st page of results -- which probably is a good thing for now -- should we do a 301 redirect or a Canonical Tag on Versions 2 and 3? Seems like with Google cracking down on duplicate content, it might be wise to be proactive. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. Matt M
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720