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.
Set Canonical for Paginated Content
-
Hi Guys,
This is a follow up on this thread: http://moz.com/community/q/dynamic-url-parameters-woocommerce-create-404-errors#
I would like to know how I can set a canonical link in Wordpress/Woocommerce which points to "View All" on category pages on our webshop.
The categories on my website can be viewed as 24/48 or All products but because the quanity constantly changes viewing 24 or 48 products isn't always possible.To point Google in the right direction I want to let them know that "View All" is the best way to go.
I've read that Google's crawler tries to do this automatically but not sure if this is the case on on my website.Here is some more info on the issue: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
Thanks for the help!Joost
-
Joost - that's correct! Yes, I assume woocommerce, since they are product pages.
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the explanation.
Ok so I block 24 and 48 for Google but users can still use them to navigate through the site.
I assume this is woocommerce related because Woocommerce creates the output for the productpages right?Thanks again!
Joost
-
Joost
I think you'll need to get a developer or someone involved to help execute, but here's the ideal scenerio:
- Add meta "noindex" tags to ?show_products=24 and 48
- Make your 'view all' URL ideally just /product-category/t-shirts/ - with no parameter - or if you have to, maybe /t-shirts/all/ - your goal here is to keep it consistent and NOT the same parameter as the other pages
- Then, whatever consistent URL you have for the 'all' - don't add "noindex" to that (keep it indexable).
- Wait for Google to remove 24/48 URLs from the index (you have to just check every week or two with site: searches)
- Once they are noindexed, block crawling with robots.txt with this line:
Disallow: /?show_products= <---but ONLY use that if you've changed your 'view all' URLs to something else! You ideally want a different URL structure for 'view all' vs. not view all to control crawling and indexation more easily.
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your reply.
For the category t-shirt I've got this:/product-category/t-shirts/?show_products=24 (24)
/product-category/t-shirts/?show_products=48 (48)
/product-category/t-shirts/?show_products=41 (when All selected)Let me know! And thanks again for your time! Really apreciate it!Joost
-
Hi Joost
Can you provide examples of how all your URLs are setup? What does the URL look like for view all, 24 items etc etc?
-
Wow Dan!
Thanks for looking in to this!
I assume you are totally right but have no idea how I should implement this strategy on my site. It just a plain wordpress install with woocommerce. I use Yoast (ofcourse) but never went in-depth with robot.txt.
How can I provide you with more info? Or better; myself
Thanks again,
Joost
-
Hi Joost
It would be better to just "noindex" anything except view all. Then once they are gone from the index, set a block in robots.txt so they can't be crawled anymore. That fixes the issue at the source, the canonical is more of a bandaid. So:
1. Add a meta "noindex" tag to everything except view all (I am not 100% sure how in your wordpress setup - there's no one way, it depends on your setup).
2. Monitor the indexation of these pages in Google and wait for them to be removed (you can check with just searching for the URL in the search bar).
3. Once they are all gone from the index, block crawlers from accessing them by adding a line to your robots.txt file blocking the 24/48 URLs - again, I don't know the exact code for your robots.txt because I am unsure of your URL setup, but a dev or someone can help - or feel free to write back with these details and I'll try to help further.
-
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for helping out. I've read a lot about the theory behind View All and why & when it's better to set canonicals on page 2 and 3 to View All.
But I can't seem to find any information how to implement the rel canonical in wordpress/woocommerce.I know that Google will try to sort it out by itself (if View All) is available but helping them with a canonical will solve a lot of 404 crawls on our site.
Any ideas?Joost
-
Hi Joost
Did you happen to take a look at SEO Guide to Google Webmaster Recommendations for Pagination? There are some great tips in there that can help you implement this.
Also, View-all in search results & 5 common mistakes with rel=canonical from Google also has some tips.
Hope these help a bit! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!
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
-
Duplicate Content Issues with Pagination
Hi Moz Community, We're an eCommerce site so we have a lot of pagination issues but we were able to fix them using the rel=next and rel=prev tags. However, our pages have an option to view 60 items or 180 items at a time. This is now causing duplicate content problems when for example page 2 of the 180 item view is the same as page 4 of the 60 item view. (URL examples below) Wondering if we should just add a canonical tag going to the the main view all page to every page in the paginated series to get ride of this issue. https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=180&p=2 https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=60&p=4 Thoughts, ideas or suggestions are welcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
URL has caps, but canonical does not. Now what?
Hi, Just started working with a site that has the occasional url with a capital, but then the url in the canonical as lower case. Neither, when entered in a browser, resolves to the other. It's a Shopify site. What do you think I should do?
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
Duplicate title while setting canonical tag.
Hi Moz Fan, My websites - https://finance.rabbit.co.th/ has run financial service, So our main keywords is about "Insurance" in Thai, But today I have an issues regarding to carnonical tag. We have a link that containing by https://finance.rabbit.co.th/car-insurance?showForm=1&brand_id=9&model_id=18&car_submodel_id=30&ci_source_id=rabbit.co.th&car_year=2014 and setting canonical to this url - https://finance.rabbit.co.th/car-insurance within 5,000 items. But in this case I have an warning by site audit tools as Duplicate Page Title (Canonical), So is that possible to drop our ranking. What should we do, setting No-Index, No-Follow for all URL that begin with ? or keep them like that.
Technical SEO | | ASKHANUMANTHAILAND0 -
Z-indexed content
I have some content on a page that I am not using any type of css hiding techniques, but I am using an image with a higher z-index in order to prevent the text from being seen until a user clicks a link to have the content scroll down. Are there any negative repercussions for doing this in regards to SEO?
Technical SEO | | cokergroup0 -
Duplicate content on job sites
Hi, I have a question regarding job boards. Many job advertisers will upload the same job description to multiple websites e.g. monster, gumtree, etc. This would therefore be viewed as duplicate content. What is the best way to handle this if we want to ensure our particular site ranks well? Thanks in advance for the help. H
Technical SEO | | HiteshP0 -
Handling of Duplicate Content
I just recently signed and joined the moz.com system. During the initial report for our web site it shows we have lots of duplicate content. The web site is real estate based and we are loading IDX listings from other brokerages into our site. If though these listings look alike, they are not. Each has their own photos, description and addresses. So why are they appear as duplicates – I would assume that they are all too closely related. Lots for Sale primarily – and it looks like lazy agents have 4 or 5 lots and input the description the same. Unfortunately for us, part of the IDX agreement is that you cannot pick and choose which listings to load and you cannot change the content. You are either all in or you cannot use the system. How should one manage duplicate content like this? Or should we ignore it? Out of 1500+ listings on our web site it shows 40 of them are duplicates.
Technical SEO | | TIM_DOTCOM0 -
Localized domains and duplicate content
Hey guys, In my company we are launching a new website and there's an issue it's been bothering me for a while. I'm sure you guys can help me out. I already have a website, let's say ABC.com I'm preparing a localized version of that website for the uk so we'll launch ABC.co.uk Basically the websites are going to be exactly the same with the difference of the homepage. They have a slightly different proposition. Using GeoIP I will redirect the UK traffic to ABC.co.uk and the rest of the traffic will still visit .com website. May google penalize this? The site itself it will be almost the same but the homepage. This may count as duplicate content even if I'm geo-targeting different regions so they will never overlap. Thanks in advance for you advice
Technical SEO | | fabrizzio0 -
Duplicate canonical URLs in WordPress
Hi everyone, I'm driving myself insane trying to figure this one out and am hoping someone has more technical chops than I do. Here's the situation... I'm getting duplicate canonical tags on my pages and posts, one is inside of the WordPress SEO (plugin) commented section, and the other is elsewhere in the header. I am running the latest version of WordPress 3.1.3 and the Genesis framework. After doing some testing and adding the following filters to my functions.php: <code>remove_action('wp_head', 'genesis_canonical'); remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');</code> ... what I get is this: With the plugin active + NO "remove action" - duplicate canonical tags
Technical SEO | | robertdempsey
With the plugin disabled + NO "remove action" - a single canonical tag
With the plugin disabled + A "remove action" - no canonical tag I have tried using only one of these remove_actions at a time, and then combining them both. Regardless, as long as I have the plugin active I get duplicate canonical tags. Is this a bug in the plugin, perhaps somehow enabling the canonical functionality of WordPress? Thanks for your help everyone. Robert Dempsey0