Google Ignoring Canonical Tag for Hundreds of Sites
-
Bazaar Voice provides a pretty easy-to-use product review solution for websites (especially sites on Magento): https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/bazaarvoice-conversations-1.html
If your product has over a certain number of reviews/questions, the plugin cuts off the number of reviews/questions that appear on the page.
To see the reviews/questions that are cut off, you have to click the plugin's next or back function. The next/back buttons' URLs have a parameter of "bvstate....."
I have noticed Google is indexing this "bvstate..." URL for hundreds of sites, even with the proper rel canonical tag in place.
Here is an example with Microsoft:
My website is seeing hundreds of these "bvstate" urls being indexed even though we have a proper rel canonical tag in place. It seems that Google is ignoring the canonical tag. In Webmaster Console, the main source of my duplicate titles/metas in the HTML improvements section is the "bvstate" URLs.
I don't necessarily want to block "bvstate" in the robots.txt as it will prohibit Google from seeing the reviews that were cutoff. Same response for prohibiting Google from crawling "bvstate" in Paramters section of Webmaster Console.
Should I just keep my fingers crossed that Google honors the rel canonical tag?
Home Depot is another site that has this same issue:
-
I have had something similar, this is response I received:
You don’t have canonical tags on the URL and that’s expected.
On pages where BVSEO is implemented, canonical tags must be updated or removed when the product contains more than one page (more than eight) of reviews. BVSEO paginates the product page so all reviews are in the search engines’ index. Canonical tags that point away from a pagination URL will cause search engines to ignore the paginated content.
When any of the BVSEO pagination parameters are present (bvstate, bvrrp, bvqap, bvsyp, bvpage), do one of the following:
•Remove the canonical tag. This is the most common, recommended solution.
•Append the "name=value" pair to the canonical URL.
-
I think I found out what is going on.
I have found that the source code does contain the proper rel canonical tag.
However, the "bazaar voice" plugin generates a code snippet that appears in the page's body where it features a [base_url]. The [base_url] should match up with the canonical tag. For some reason, it isn't. The [base_url] that is generated contains the "bvstate" parameter.
Tools like the Mozbar, and I believe even Googlebot, are extracting out overriding the rel canonical tag with the [base_url] that appears in the code.
Complex!
-
Yeah, it's very strange... if you view-source on the BVSTATE url that is cached, the proper canonical tag is in there. Don't know why toolbar apps like Mozbar show otherwise. I think you're right, must be a deeper issue.
-
I just ran this query for bvstate URLs indexed for the H&R Block site. Mozbar shows canonical tags with bvstate in them, and Screaming Frog finds no canonical tags at all. There is a deeper issue that is not simply Google ignoring them.
-
Hey Logan -
The Microsoft canonical is not being obeyed. The canonical tag points to the one representative URL for the product whereas the "bvstate" URL is shown as being cached.
If you do a search in Google for inurl:"bvstate" , you will see hundreds of sites like H&R Block, Kohls, etc.
-
Do you have different examples? The Home Depot link doesn't work when trying to view the actual page on the site. With the Microsoft link, the canonical is working, as the version with the parameter is not indexed in Google, but the canonical version is indexed, which is what I would expect for a canonical that is being obeyed.
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
-
Best use of Canonical Tag with Mini-Websites
Hello, I was wondering what the best way would be to implement Canonical Tags in kind of a unusual situation. The company I work for creates single property websites for real estate agents. We register a URL such as 123MainSt.com - however through DNS we redirect that to a path. For example: http://www.944milmadadr.com would redirect to: https://www.qwikvid.com/realestate/go/v1/home/?idx=wDg1Gdwt7wnQiR3LMeCx28qPnWTKM0JV If we wanted to rank high in the search engines for our clients: "944 Milmada Dr" - Would it be the best practice to Canonical: http://www.944milmadadr.com ? Thanks in advance for any feedback on this!! Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Qwikvid0 -
Sitemap Indexed Pages, Google Glitch or Problem With Site?
Hello, I have a quick question about our Sitemap Web Pages Indexed status in Google Search Console. Because of the drastic drop I can't tell if this is a glitch or a serious issue. When you look at the attached image you can see that under Sitemaps Web Pages Indexed has dropped suddenly on 3/12/17 from 6029 to 540. Our Index status shows 7K+ indexed. Other than product updates/additions and homepage layout updates there have been no significant changes to this website. If it helps we are operating on the Volusion platform. Thanks for your help! -Ryan rou1zMs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rrhansen0 -
Completely redesigned webmaster - set up new site in Google Webmaster Tools, or keep existing??
Hi - our company just completely redesigned our website and went from a static HTML site to a PHP based site, so every single URL has changed (around 1500 pages). I put the same verification code into the new site and re-verified but now Google is listing tons and tons of 404's. Some of them are really old pages that haven't existing in a long time, it would literally be impossible to create all the redirects for the 404s it's pulling. Question - when completely changing a site like this, should I have created a whole new Search Console? Or did I do the right thing by using the existing one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
How and When Should I use Canonical Url Tags?
Pretty new to the SEO universe. But I have not used any canonical tags, just because there is not definitive source explaining exactly when and why you should use them??? Am I the only one who feels this way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenrushdaily0 -
Why is google truncating my title tag?
We are trying to figure out why the search result for the term "au pair" is not matching our designated title tag or anything on our page. If you search "au pair", please see the result for the domain interexchange.org. We do not see this problem with other search terms.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jrjames830 -
Why is my m-dot site outranking my main site in SERPs?
My client has a WP site and a Duda mobile site that we inherited. For some reason their m-dot site is ranking on P1 of Google for their top KWs instead of the main site which is much more robust. The main site might rank beyond page 5 when the generic home page for their m-dot site appears on P1. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
When migrating website platforms but keeping the domain name how best do we add the new site to google webmaster tools? Best redirect practices?
We are moving from BigCommerce to Shopify but maintaining our domain name and need to make sure that all links redirect to their corresponding links. We understand the nature of 301s and are fine with that, but when it comes to adding the site to google webmaster tools, not losing link juice and the change of address tool we are kind of lost. Any advice would be most welcome. Thank you so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WNL0 -
Robots.txt Blocked Most Site URLs Because of Canonical
Had a bit of a "Gotcha" in Magento. We had Yoast Canonical Links extension which worked well , but then we installed Mageworx SEO Suite.. which broke Canonical Links. Unfortunately it started putting www.mysite.com/catalog/product/view/id/516/ as the Canonical Link - and all URLs with /catalog/productview/* is blocked in Robots.txt So unfortunately We told Google that the correct page is also a blocked page. they haven't been removed as far as I can see but traffic has certainly dropped. We have also , at the same time had some Site changes grouping some pages & having 301 redirects. Resubmitted site map & did a fetch as google. Any other ideas? And Idea how long it will take to become unblocked?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0