Using unique content from "rel=canonical"ized page
-
Hey everyone, I have a question about the following scenario:
Page 1: Text A, Text B, Text C
Page 2 (rel=canonical to Page 1): Text A, Text B, Text C, Text D
Much of the content on page 2 is "rel=canonical"ized to page 1 to signalize duplicate content. However, Page 2 also contains some unique text not found in Page 1.
How safe is it to use the unique content from Page 2 on a new page (Page 3) if the intention is to rank Page 3?
Does that make any sense?
-
Yeah, I tend to agree with Maximilian and Mike - I'm not clear on the use-case scenario here and, technically, pages 1 and 2 aren't duplicated. Rel=canonical probably will still work, in most cases, and will keep page 2 from looking like a duplicate (and from ranking), but I'd like to understand the situation better.
If Google did honor the canonical tag on page 2, then the duplication between pages 2 and 3 shouldn't be a problem. I'm just thinking there may be a better way.
-
Technically Page 1 would contain the subset of Page 2's superset except that Page 1 is likely older, ranking better and the page you want to keep so would take precedence. In which case Page 2's content would be considered as duplicating Page 1's superset of content and Page 2 should be canonicalized to Page 1. Of course, Rel=Canonical is a suggestion not a directive so the search engines reserve the right to not listen to it if they feel the tag isn't relevant.
The real question here would be why are you reusing all of that copy and would those pages be better served with more unique content instead of continuing to reuse and canonicalize?
-
Hey Mak,
One thing to bear in mind is that the canonical tag should be used on pages with the same content, if there is extra content on Page 2 that doesn't appear on Page 1, then Google could ignore the canonical tag al together:
_The
rel="canonical"
attribute should be used only to specify the preferred version of many pages with identical content (although minor differences, such as sort order, are okay).
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
-
How long will old pages stay in Google's cache index. We have a new site that is two months old but we are seeing old pages even though we used 301 redirects.
Two months ago we launched a new website (same domain) and implemented 301 re-directs for all of the pages. Two months later we are still seeing old pages in Google's cache index. So how long should I tell the client this should take for them all to be removed in search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Liamis0 -
Base copy on 1 page, then adding a bit more for another page - potential duplicate content. What to do?
Hi all, We're creating a section for a client that is based on road trips - for example, New York to Toronto. We have a 3 day trip, a 5 day trip, a 7 day trip and a 10 day trip. The 3 day trip is the base, and then for the 5 day trip, we add another couple of stops, for the 7 day trip, we add a couple more stops and then for the 10 day trip, there might be two or three times the number of stops of the initial 3 day trip. However, the base content is similar - you start at New York, you finish in Toronto, you likely go through Niagara on all trips. It's not exact duplicate content, but it's similar content. I'm not sure how to look after it? The thoughts we have are:1) Use canonical tags 3,5,7 day trips to the 10 day trip.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalhothouse
2) It's not exactly duplicate content, so just go with the content as it is We don't want to get hit by any penalty for duplicate content so just want to work out what you guys think is the best way to go about this. Thanks in advance!0 -
Using Canonical URL to poin to an external page
I was wondering if I can use a canonical URL that points to a page residing on external site? So a page like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | llamb
www.site1.com/whatever.html will have a canonical link in its header to www.site2.com/whatever.html. Thanks.0 -
To "Guest Blog" or "Ghost Blog"?
To "Guest Blog" or "Ghost Blog"? I've been wondering which would be better given G's "authorship" tracking program. "Onreact.Com" indirectly raised this issue in a recent blog post "Google Authorship Markup Disadvantages Everybody Ignores" as : "Google might dismiss your guest articles. Your great guest blogging campaign on dozens of other blogs might fail because Google will count the links all as one as the same author has written all the posts and linked to himself. So maybe the links won't count at all." Assuming all other things are equal, would you use "Guest Author" with G Authorship attribution (if allowed) or just ghost the article and include an in-text link without attribution to you as the author?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JustDucky1 -
The same "About" page on multiple WordPress microsites
Hello there, I have over 10 WordPress websites that all have the same "About" page because the same company. I have concerns that this will adversely affect my sites and i'm looking for the best way to deal with this. I was either going to remove the "About" page with Google Webmaster Tools and robots.txt or use the canonical meta tag on that page. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SpaMedica0 -
Use of rel=canonical to view all page & No follow links
Hey, I have a couple of questions regarding e-commerce category pages and filtering options: I would like to implement the rel=canonical to the view all page as suggested on this article on googlewebmastercentral. If you go on one of my category pages you will see that both the "next page link" and the "view all" links are nofollowed. Is that a mistake? How does nofoolow combines with canonical view all? Is it a good thing to nofollow the "sorty by" pages or should I also use Noindex for them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ypsilon0 -
Rel Canonical Syntax
My IT department is getting ready to setup the rel canonical tag, finally. I took a look at the code on our test server and see that they are using a single quote in the tag syntax (see code block below). Should I be concerned? Will Google read those lines the same? <link rel='canonical' href='[http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits](view-source:http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits)' />VS. **versus** <link rel="canonical" href="[http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits](view-source:http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/easter-costumes/bunny-suits)" />
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | costume0