Is the full URL necessary for successful Canonical Links?
-
Hi, my first question and hopefully an easy enough one to answer.
Currently in the head element of our pages we have canonical references such as:
(Yes, untidy URL...we are working on it!)
I am just trying to find out whether this snippet of the full URL is adequete for canonicalization or if the full domain is needed aswell.
My reason for asking is that the SEOmoz On-Page Optimization grading tool is 'failing' all our pages on the "Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical" value.
I have been unable to find a definitive answer on this, although admittedly most examples do use the full URL. (I am not the site developer so cannot simply change this myself, but rather have to advise him in a weekly meeting).
So in short, presumably using the full URL is best practise, but is it essential to its effectiveness when being read by the search engines? Or could there be another reason why the "Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical" value is not being green ticked?
Thank you very much, I appreciate any advice you can give.
-
Thanks I will get the full URLs implemented to avoid any future confusions.
I can't give an exact size of the site but I know it is much larger than it should be. It seems as though our CMS has been unnecessarily producing new URLs for the same pages over and over which we are aiming to fix very soon.
-
Thank you for your fast responses!
Sorry Damien, I am at odds as to how I missed this bit of information!
In light of this, do you have any clues as to why SEOmoz on page diagnostics does not like our canonical references?
-
Thank you for your fast responses!
Sorry Damien, I am at odds as to how I missed this bit of information!
In light of this, do you have any clues as to why SEOmoz on page diagnostics does not like our canonical references?
-
Interesting that Google mentions absolute and relative urls, but they don't specifically address root relative urls (what this is, since it begins with the "/") or show it in their examples.
-
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
Part of relevance -
Can the link be relative or absolute?
The rel="canonical" attribute can be used with relative or absolute links, but we recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties. If your document specifies a base link, any relative links will be relative to that base link.
-
If you check half way down the page it answers exactly what you're after.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
In short, it's fine
DD
..if you can't be bothered finding it:
"Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical, such as ?
Yes, relative paths are recognized as expected with the tag. Also, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base 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
-
Stuck with canonical URL - main site vs categorys?
Hello, I started to doubt myself. We have a classified advertisements website. On the main www.website.com page, almost all the advertisements are shown. Now we take those advertisements and also split them into categorys Category 1 / category 2 / category 3 / category 4 Now all those categories almost always have the same content as www.website.com except a bit less (because X amount of content is now divided also to 4-5 groups) For raking should i actually tell google that those categories are a copy of www.website.com or they should still be as they are?
Technical SEO | | advertisingcloud0 -
How do I deindex url parameters
Google indexed a bunch of our URL parameters. I'm worried about duplicate content. I used the URL parameter tool in webmaster to set it so future parameters don't get indexed. What can I do to remove the ones that have already been indexed? For example, Site.com/products and site.com/products?campaign=email have both been indexed as separate pages even though they are the same page. If I use a no index I'm worried about de indexing the product page. What can I do to just deindexed the URL parameter version? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | BT20090 -
Will Google Recrawl an Indexed URL Which is No Longer Internally Linked?
We accidentally introduced Google to our incomplete site. The end result: thousands of pages indexed which return nothing but a "Sorry, no results" page. I know there are many ways to go about this, but the sheer number of pages makes it frustrating. Ideally, in the interim, I'd love to 404 the offending pages and allow Google to recrawl them, realize they're dead, and begin removing them from the index. Unfortunately, we've removed the initial internal links that lead to this premature indexation from our site. So my question is, will Google revisit these pages based on their own records (as in, this page is indexed, let's go check it out again!), or will they only revisit them by following along a current site structure? We are signed up with WMT if that helps.
Technical SEO | | kirmeliux0 -
URL removals
Hello there, I found out that some pages of the site have two different URL's pointing at the same page generating duplicate content, title and description. Is there a way to block one of them? cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
IP canonization
Hi, I need your opinions about IP canonization. Site www.peoplemaps.com is on 78.136.30.112 IP. Now we redirect that IP to the main page (because of possible duplicate content). But, we have more sites on the same IP address. How can that affect on their SEO? Before redirecting, when we visit that IP address, the browser showed mainpage of www.peoplemaps.com, not any other site. Thanks, Milan edit: We have used 301 redirect.
Technical SEO | | MilanB.0 -
SEO URLs?
What are the best practices for generating SEO-friendly headlines? dashes between words? underscores between words? etc. Looking for a programatically generated solution that's using editor-written headlines to produce an SEO-friendly URL Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ShaneHolladay0 -
Adding parameters in URLs and linking to a page
Hi, Here's a fairly technical question: We would like to implement badge feature where linking websites using a badge would use urls such as: domain.com/page?state=texas&city=houston domain.com/page?state=neveda&city=lasvegas Important note: the parameter will change the information and layout of the page: domain.com/page Would those 2 urls above along with their extra parameters be considered the same page as domain.com/page by google's crawler? We're considering adding the parameter "state" and "city" to Google WMT url parameter tool to tel them who to handle those parameters. Any feedback or comments is appreciated! Thanks in advance. Martin
Technical SEO | | MartinH0 -
What i should do about bad links ?
Hi, my blog is http://www.dota2club.com/ and i have many bad links to my blog what i should do about that and how ? i started 10 days ago guest blogging but my bad links from before are hurting my blog. please help 🙂 thank you !!!
Technical SEO | | wolfinjo0