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.
Canonical URLs and Sitemaps
-
We are using canonical link tags for product pages in a scenario where the URLs on the site contain category names, and the canonical URL points to a URL which does not contain the category names. So, the product page on the site is like www.example.com/clothes/skirts/skater-skirt-12345, and also like www.example.com/sale/clearance/skater-skirt-12345 in another category. And on both of these pages, the canonical link tag references a 3rd URL like www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. This 3rd URL, used in the canonical link tag is a valid page, and displays the same content as the other two versions, but there are no actual links to this generic version anywhere on the site (nor external).
Questions:
1. Does the generic URL referenced in the canonical link also need to be included as on-page links somewhere in the crawled navigation of the site, or is it okay to be just a valid URL not linked anywhere except for the canonical tags?
2. In our sitemap, is it okay to reference the non-canonical URLs, or does the sitemap have to reference only the canonical URL? In our case, the sitemap points to yet a 3rd variation of the URL, like www.example.com/product.jsp?productID=12345. This page retrieves the same content as the others, and includes a canonical link tag back to www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. Is this a valid approach, or should we revise the sitemap to point to either the category-specific links or the canonical links?
-
Thanks. And since we've now implemented the aforementioned changes, I can give some findings back.
What we did: We changed our sitemap to point to the same canonical URLs as are referenced in the tags on our product pages (only one entry in sitemap per product).
What we didn't do: We didn't change the product pages themselves. They still have a canonical URL link reference, pointing to a URL with no category paths, which does not naturally occur in the navigation of the site (on the site, product pages all have category paths in the URL).
Findings: After submitting the new sitemap, the stats in Google Webmasters Tools indicate that almost all (> 96%) of our product pages are indexed. We believe that the pages were already indexed (for the most part) and now the sitemap is useful for metrics. From the timing, it's unlikely that the sitemap itself caused our index stats to get significantly better in just 1 day. Possible, but unlikely. In either case, since our product page URLs still reference canonical links which don't exist in the site's navigation, the evidence suggests that the canonical link itself is enough, and an actual navigation path to the canonical version of the page is not needed. That's just empirical evidence, we have no inside info on Google's methods, but this is what we believe now after monitoring.
-
With the canonical tag in place, I'm guessing that extra link would basically be ignored. It's probably harmless, but I'm not sure it will do anything. You could create an HTML "sitemap" (or even an XML sitemap) with the canonical URLs. It's not my first choice, but it at least would give Google an extra push.
-
We're in process of updating our canonical tagging and our sitemap, based on the feedback here. I have a question for the group though. Unfortunately we can't follow Andy Smith's suggestion of creating a "By Brand" navigation section on the site, since this web site is all private label (they sell all products under their own brand name).
One possible solution is to create a user-accessible site map page, with an "all products" paginated section, where all these product page URLs would be the canonical version.
But another possible solution, easier to implement, would be to have a user accessible link on each product page to the canonical version of itself. That is, when the user is on www.example.com/clothes/skirts/skater-skirt-12345, there would be a link to www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345, which would also be the URL specified in the canonical tag.
This seems redundant, but our results so far have borne out that the canonical tag pointing to a URL which doesn't really exist anywhere in the navigation doesn't seem to be having the desired effect. So, the thought is that a combination of the canonical tag, plus a "real" link to that same URL referenced in the canonical tag would better inform the search engine robots. But our hesitation is whether it should work for this link to be on the product page itself (e.g. the non-canonical version).
Any thoughts or feedback on approach?
-
Thanks for the responses. I've been monitoring for the past couple of weeks with the current sitemap and canonical structure, and so far the data seems consistent with the replies to this thread. In GWT, the sitemap stats show less than 1% of the URLs submitted are indexed so far. We have an action plan now to update the canonical structure and the sitemap to point to URLs which will be naturally crawled on the site as well.
-
There's no "have to" in most of these situations, but it boils down to this - the more canonical your canonical URL actually is, the better chance you have of Google honoring it. In other words, if you set a canonical tag but then never use that in internal links or your XML sitemap, odds are pretty good that Google may ignore the tag in some cases. You're basically saying "Hey, this URL is canonical! No, this one is! No, this one!" - it's a mixed message, and they're going to try to interpret it algorithmically.
I definitely think pointing to yet another version in the XML sitemap is a problem. Ideally, it would be great to unify your URLs, but if that's not possible, getting the canonical version in the sitemap would be a big help (and introducing yet another variant isn't good, so you'd kill two birds with one stone). As Andy said, if you could create some kind of internal link to the canonical version, even if it's not the main link, that could also help. I only hesitate on that one, because you don't want to end up with a weird, artificial linking structure (just creating links to have links).
Please note, this isn't necessarily a disaster the way you have it. Google could honor the tags properly and generally rank your site correctly. In my experience, though, it's a recipe for long-term problems, and it's worth fixing.
-
The purpose of the canonical tag is to tell Google which page to index first. So, on that note, I usually use the canonical tag on the strongest page in terms of pagerank, as this shows which page is linked to the best.
I'm also guessing you're using a framwork/platform like Magento, this can make linking quite difficult. I often suggest creating Brand pages, and link to the product page, the "3rd URL", from there. Brand pages also great for SEO, as most people search for brands first. Great place to get some fat head keywords in.
Also, make sure you put in the http:// as well, I think it is good practice to put in the full URL.
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
-
Site-wide Canonical Rewrite Rule for Multiple Currency URL Parameters?
Hi Guys, I am currently working with an eCommerce site which has site-wide duplicate content caused by currency URL parameter variations. Example: https://www.marcb.com/ https://www.marcb.com/?setCurrencyId=3 https://www.marcb.com/?setCurrencyId=2 https://www.marcb.com/?setCurrencyId=1 My initial thought is to create a bunch of canonical tags which will pass on link equity to the core URL version. However I was wondering if there was a rule which could be implemented within the .htaccess file that will make the canonical site-wide without being so labour intensive. I also noticed that these URLs are being indexed in Google, so would it be worth setting a site-wide noindex to these variations also? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickG-1230 -
URL Rewriting Best Practices
Hey Moz! I’m getting ready to implement URL rewrites on my website to improve site structure/URL readability. More specifically I want to: Improve our website structure by removing redundant directories. Replace underscores with dashes and remove file extensions for our URLs. Please see my example below: Old structure: http://www.widgets.com/widgets/commercial-widgets/small_blue_widget.htm New structure: https://www.widgets.com/commercial-widgets/small-blue-widget I've read several URL rewriting guides online, all of which seem to provide similar but overall different methods to do this. I'm looking for what's considered best practices to implement these rewrites. From what I understand, the most common method is to implement rewrites in our .htaccess file using mod_rewrite (which will find the old URLs and rewrite them according to the rewrites I implement). One question I can't seem to find a definitive answer to is when I implement the rewrite to remove file extensions/replace underscores with dashes in our URLs, do the webpage file names need to be edited to the new format? From what I understand the webpage file names must remain the same for the rewrites in the .htaccess to work. However, our internal links (including canonical links) must be changed to the new URL format. Can anyone shed light on this? Also, I'm aware that implementing URL rewriting improperly could negatively affect our SERP rankings. If I redirect our old website directory structure to our new structure using this rewrite, are my bases covered in regards to having the proper 301 redirects in place to not affect our rankings negatively? Please offer any advice/reliable guides to handle this properly. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
Duplicate URLs ending with #!
Hi guys, Does anyone know why a site can contain duplicate URLs ending with hastag & exclamation mark e.g. https://site.com.au/#! We are finding a lot of these URLs (as duplicates) and i was wondering what they are from developer standpoint? And do you think it's worth the time and effort adding a rel canonical tag or 301 to these URLs eventhough they're not getting indexed by Google? Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Pagination parameters and canonical
Hello, We have a site that manages pagination through parameters in urls, this way: friendly-url.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
friendly-url.html?p=2
friendly-url.html?p=3
... We've rencently added the canonical tag pointing to friendly-url.html for all paginated results. In search console, we have the "p" parameter identified by google.
Now that the canonical has been added, should we still configure the parameter in search console, and tell google that it is being use for pagination? Thank you!0 -
Attack of the dummy urls -- what to do?
It occurs to me that a malicious program could set up thousands of links to dummy pages on a website: www.mysite.com/dynamicpage/dummy123 www.mysite.com/dynamicpage/dummy456 etc.. How is this normally handled? Does a developer have to look at all the parameters to see if they are valid and if not, automatically create a 301 redirect or 404 not found? This requires a table lookup of acceptable url parameters for all new visitors. I was thinking that bad url names would be rare so it would be ok to just stop the program with a message, until I realized someone could intentionally set up links to non existent pages on a site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood1 -
Does Google Read URL's if they include a # tag? Re: SEO Value of Clean Url's
An ECWID rep stated in regards to an inquiry about how the ECWID url's are not customizable, that "an important thing is that it doesn't matter what these URLs look like, because search engines don't read anything after that # in URLs. " Example http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 Basically all of this: #!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 That is a snippet out of a conversation where ECWID said that dirty urls don't matter beyond a hashtag... Is that true? I haven't found any rule that Google or other search engines (Google is really the most important) don't index, read, or place value on the part of the url after a # tag.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
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 | | PeterRota0 -
Online Sitemap Generator
I have a site that has around 5,000 pages now. Are there any recommened online free/paid tools to generate a sitemap for me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhysmaster0