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.
Diagnosing Canonical Errors Is Screaming frog reliable?
-
Morning from suny & warm wetherby UK
On this page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/ screaming frog is citing a canonical error but I'm confused as this piece of code is in place:
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage" />
So my question is please - "Does this page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/ have a caninical error or is screaming frog useless?
Other examples where screaming frog is picking up canonical errors include:
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/buying-a-home/right-to-manage/Oh forgot to say the preffered version is http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage/
Any insights welcvome
-
Hey,
Long time since the Question, I was just wondering if you worked it out or not.
Gr.,
Istvan
-
I think Screaming Frog is just warning you that the canonical version doesn't seem to match the display URL. They can't really tell (we have the same problem in SEOmoz tools) what the "right" canonical is - they can just warn of a mismatch.
I'm a bit confused as to the purpose of the dual URLs here. The best canonical implementation is to use one URL. The canonical tag can act as a band-aid, but consistency is still the best defense. Having multiple paths to the same page is rarely beneficial.
-
Having spoke to oiur internal helpdesk (Who I trust & do know what theyre talking about) theyve taken a look at:
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/footer-links/left/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/buying-a-home/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage/
and I'm afraid they have a different perspective which is they see no canonical problem
Hey ho think I'll just set my head on fire then maybe things will be more clearer
-
Hi Istvan - your advice is good but ive just discovered its not been implemented! Time to kick some ass, I'll update you
-
Hey,
Any news on how it went? I am curious if that was the problem or not.
Gr.,
Istvan
-
Hey,
Maybe this helps you a littlebit: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seos-guide-to-http-status-codes
Dr. Pete's article explains well how the status codes work.
Gr.,
Istvan
-
Wow great anser, I'm on to this now & will updat you with how things went
-
Hey there!
I think I have found what your problem is with you canonical link
In your code you have:
And probably you are somewhere forcing the URls to have a / at the end.
So basically you are confusing browsers and search engine bots, because they now cannot tell which is the real version:
SE enters the page. Then it sees that the right version should be the one WITHOUT a "/" at the end, then that pages has a 301 redirect to the version which HAS a "/" at the end of the URL (but that has a canonical which points out that the preffered version should be ). So it is a non-ending circle.
So if you add a / to the end of your URl, your problem should be solved.
Final thought: Screaming Frog is working well.
I hope this was a solution.
Cheers,
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
-
Missing Canonical Tag for a PDF document
Error: Missing Canonical Tag
Technical SEO | | ahmadmdahshan
But URL is not a webpage it is a PDF document, is this fixable?0 -
What could cause Google to not honor canonical URLs?
I have a strange situation on a website, when I do a Google query of site:example.com all the top indexed results appear to be queries that users can perform on the website. So any random term the user searches for on the website for some reason is causing the search result page to get indexed - like example.com/search/query/random-keywords However, the search results page has a canonical tag on it that points to example.com/search, but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. Any thoughts or ideas why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Trailing slash URLs and canonical links
Hi, I've seen a fair amount of topics speaking about the difference between domain names ending with or without trailing slashes, the impact on crawlers and how it behaves with canonical links.
Technical SEO | | GhillC
However, it sticks to domain names only.
What about subfolders and pages then? How does it behaves with those? Say I've a site structured like this:
https://www.domain.com
https://www.domain.com/page1 And for each of my pages, I've an automatic canonical link ending with a slash.
Eg. rel="canonical" href="https://www.domain.com/page1/" /> for the above page. SEM Rush flags this as a canonical error. But is it exactly?
Are all my canonical links wrong because of that slash? And as subsidiary question, both domain.com/page1 and domain.com/page1/ are accessible. Is it this a mistake or it doesn't make any difference (I've read that those are considered different pages)? Thanks!
G0 -
Does Google read dynamic canonical tags?
Does Google recognize rel=canonical tag if loaded dynamically via javascript? Here's what we're using to load: <script> //Inject canonical link into page head if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname1") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/kapiolani", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname2") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/straub", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname3") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/pali-momi", ""); } if (window.location.href.indexOf("/subdirname4") != -1) { canonicalLink = window.location.href.replace("/wilcox", ""); } if (canonicalLink != window.location.href) { var link = document.createElement('link'); link.rel = 'canonical'; link.href = canonicalLink; document.head.appendChild(link); } script>
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Canonical issues using Screaming Frog and other tools?
In the Directives tab within Screaming Frog, can anyone tell me what the difference between "canonicalised", "canonical", and "no canonical" means? They're found in the filter box. I see the data but am not sure how to interpret them. Which one of these would I check to find canonical issues within a website? Are there any other easy ways to identify canonical issues?
Technical SEO | | Flock.Media0 -
:443 - 404 error
I get strange :443 errors in my 404 monitor on Wordpress https://www.compleetverkleed.nl:443/hoed-al-capone-panter-8713647758068-2/
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
https://www.compleetverkleed.nl:443/cart/www.compleetverkleed.nl/feestkleding
https://www.compleetverkleed.nl:443/maskers/ I have no idea where these come from :S2 -
Rel=canonical Weebly
My problem is with my website as it says I have duplicate page titles and contents because of a /index.html. It says the duplicate content is due to the fact that my homepage on my website is www.seacandytackle.com but it is also www.seacandytackle.com/index.html because I use weebly. How can I use the tag to fix this? It won't let me do a 301 redirect because it is a home page. How can I fix this? What code would I have to use and which url? Also it says that I have duplicate page content between http://www.seacandytackle.com/index.html and http://www.seacandytackle.comhttp://www.seacandytackle.com but I don't recall having any page that looks like http://www.seacandytackle.com http://www.seacandytackle.com from weebly. How can I fix this issue as well? Thank you for any help. Step by step implementation would be particularly helpful in using the rel= tags to fix these duplicate issues.
Technical SEO | | SeaCandyTackle0 -
Do I have a problem with missing pages in Screaming Frog?
We have category pages and some of those pages have pagination due to us having additional items. Screaming Frog could not find the items that were after page 1. Is this a problem for Google? These item pages are still in the sitemap. I am sure they can find them to index them but does it hurt rankings at all.
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0