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.
Rel=canonical and internal links
-
Hi Mozzers,
I was musing about rel=canonical this morning and it occurred to me that I didnt have a good answer to the following question:
- How does applying a rel=canonical on page A referencing page B as the canonical version affect the treatment of the links on page A?
I am thinking of whether those links would get counted twice, or in the case of ver-near-duplicates which may have an extra sentence which includes an extra link, whther that extra link would count towards the internal link graph or not.
I suspect that google would basically ignore all the content on page A and only look to page B taking into account only page Bs links.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
-
Thanks a lot for your reply Stephan!
I would be super intertesting to read a little more around the subject. Do you have any studies or cases you might refer me to which describe the flow of link equity to "page C" from "Page A"?
Many thanks
-
It's an interesting question. I'll extend your example slightly, so that we have:
- Page A, with a canonical pointing to Page B
- Page A also has a regular link to Page C
- Page B does not link to Page C at all
At the crawling stage, Googlebot will parse all of the links on Page A. So in this case it discovers both B and C (if it doesn't know of their existence already). This is uncontroversial stuff—the use of the canonical tag doesn't affect crawling/discovery.
You might then assume that Google—if it decides to obey the canonical instruction, which of course it doesn't always do—will pass all of Page A's link equity to Page B (minus the small fraction), and then no longer count that link from A to C in the link graph. Almost like a redirect, but for bots only.
However, that doesn't seem to happen. The link from A to C is still included in the link graph. PageRank (or whatever's replaced it) may still flow through that link, even though Page A is not to be indexed.
So to answer your original question, the content of Page A will not be ignored, and neither will its links. The unclear bit is how much Google will value that link from A to C.
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
-
Are rel=author and rel=publisher meta tags currently in use?
Hello, Do these meta tags have any current usage? <meta name="author" content="Author Name"><meta name="publisher" content="Publisher Name"> I have also seen this usage linking to a companies Google+ Page:Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | srbello0 -
Case Sensitive URLs, Duplicate Content & Link Rel Canonical
I have a site where URLs are case sensitive. In some cases the lowercase URL is being indexed and in others the mixed case URL is being indexed. This is leading to duplicate content issues on the site. The site is using link rel canonical to specify a preferred URL in some cases however there is no consistency whether the URLs are lowercase or mixed case. On some pages the link rel canonical tag points to the lowercase URL, on others it points to the mixed case URL. Ideally I'd like to update all link rel canonical tags and internal links throughout the site to use the lowercase URL however I'm apprehensive! My question is as follows: If I where to specify the lowercase URL across the site in addition to updating internal links to use lowercase URLs, could this have a negative impact where the mixed case URL is the one currently indexed? Hope this makes sense! Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allianzireland0 -
Do internal links from non-indexed pages matter?
Hi everybody! Here's my question. After a site migration, a client has seen a big drop in rankings. We're trying to narrow down the issue. It seems that they have lost around 15,000 links following the switch, but these came from pages that were blocked in the robots.txt file. I was wondering if there was any research that has been done on the impact of internal links from no-indexed pages. Would be great to hear your thoughts! Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Multiple Internal links to same destinations
My company is redoing our homepage and there will be 4 links to our main play pages (5 games). 2 in the menu and 2 within the content. I was thinking I should no follow one of the links on the homepage + 1 in the menu so that we don't have link dilution from having multiple internal links to the same destination within 1 page. Does this make sense? Any downside of this or suggestions of a solution that may be more effective? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links
Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
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 -
Does rel=canonical fix duplicate page titles?
I implemented rel=canonical on our pages which helped a lot, but my latest Moz crawl is still showing lots of duplicate page titles (2,000+). There are other ways to get to this page (depending on what feature you clicked, it will have a different URL) but will have the same page title. Does having rel=canonical in place fix the duplicate page title problem, or do I need to change something else? I was under the impression that the canonical tag would address this by telling the crawler which URL was the URL and the crawler would only use that one for the page title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | askotzko0 -
Increasing Internal Links But Avoiding a Link Farm
I'm looking to create a page about Widgets and all of the more specific names for Widgets we sell: ABC Brand Widgets, XYZ Brand Widgets, Big Widgets, Small Widgets, Green Widgets, Blue Widgets, etc. I'd like my Widget page to give a brief explanation about each kind of Widget with a link deeper into my site that gives more detail and allows you to purchase. The problem is I have a lot of Widgets and this could get messy: ABC Green Widgets, Small XYZ Widgets, many combinations. I can see my Widget page teetering on being a link farm if I start throwing in all of these combos. So where should I stop? How much do I do? I've read more than 100 links on a page being considered a link farm, is that a hardline number or a general guideline?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rball10