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.
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?
-
I've had some run-ins with case-sensitive URLs in the past and it drives me crazy, I don't understand why CMSs still do that!! While canonical tags are a perfectly fine way to handle this, there's a better solution. Brian Love wrote a great blog post on how to do server-side URL lower-casing. I've used this on a few sites and it works great.
-
In my opinion, you dont have to redirect if you have set the canonicals. Couple of things to keep in check (more best practice) with this approach -
1. All the internal links are lower case - just makes the website look cleaner by saving a lot of search engine bots time identifying the canonical urls. Less processing for search engine bots this way. Also, it will help with analytics tracking. If the internal links are uppercase then users will end up browsing upper case URLs. If lower case URLs are indexed and getting traffic but after reaching your website users start viewing upper case URLs too then it can cause your analytics data to be scattered between these two.
2. Monitor your organic results to see what URLs are indexed in SERPs. If the canonical tags are implemented well and search engines have crawled your website, your preferred URLs should show in organic SERPs.
-
That might be an YUGE number of urls. Do you think forwarding all those is really worth doing, since the the canonical is always the lower case version?
-
you will have to redirect one URL to another in order to have them resolved the way you want.
If you have canonical tags implemented, then it wont redirect and resolve. The purpose of canonical tag is to let search engines know about your preferred URL. It doesnt redirect search engines or users to your preferred page.
Hope this makes sense.
- Malika
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, submitted URL not selected as canonical
Hi all, A number of our pages have dropped out of search rankings. It seems they are being marked as "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical" However, the page Google is choosing as the canonical is totally different - different headings, titles, metadata, content on the page. We are completely mystified as to why this is happening. If anyone can shed any light, it would be hugely appreciated! Example URL is this one:
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/london Which Google seems to think is a duplicate of this: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/solicitor/london0 -
Trailing slash URLs and canonical links
Hi, I've seen a fair amount of topics speaking about the difference between domain names ending with or without trailing slashes, the impact on crawlers and how it behaves with canonical links.
Technical SEO | | GhillC
However, it sticks to domain names only.
What about subfolders and pages then? How does it behaves with those? Say I've a site structured like this:
https://www.domain.com
https://www.domain.com/page1 And for each of my pages, I've an automatic canonical link ending with a slash.
Eg. rel="canonical" href="https://www.domain.com/page1/" /> for the above page. SEM Rush flags this as a canonical error. But is it exactly?
Are all my canonical links wrong because of that slash? And as subsidiary question, both domain.com/page1 and domain.com/page1/ are accessible. Is it this a mistake or it doesn't make any difference (I've read that those are considered different pages)? Thanks!
G0 -
Rel=Canonical For Landing Pages
We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created. We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale. The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
URL path randomly changing
Hi eveyone, got a quick question about URL structures: I'm currently working in ecommerce with a site that has hundreds of products that can be accessed through different URL paths: 1)www.domain.com/productx 2)www.domain.com/category/productx 3)www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx 4)www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx 5)... In order to get rid of dublicate content issues, the canoncial tag has been installed on all the pages required. The problem I'm witnessing now is the following: If a visitor comes to the site and navigates to the product through example 2) at time the URL shown in the URL browser box is example 4), sometimes example 1) or whatever. So it is constantly changing. Does anyone know, why this happens and if it has any impact on GA tracking or even on SEO peformance. Any reply is much appreciated Thanks you
Technical SEO | | ennovators0 -
Do canonical tags pass all of the link juice onto the URL they point to?
I have an ecommerce website where the category pages have various sorting and paging options which add a suffix to the URLs. My site is setup so the root category URL, domain.com/category-name, has a canonical tag pointing to domain.com/category-name/page1/price however all links, both interner & external, point to the former (i.e. domain.com/category-name). I would like to know whether all of the link juice is being passed onto the canonical tag URL? Otherwise should I change the canonical tag to point the other way? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tjhossy0 -
Urls with or without .html ending
Hello, Can anyone show me some authority info on wheher links are better with or without a .html ending? Thanks is advance
Technical SEO | | sesertin0 -
Should me URLs be uppercase or lowercase
I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of 301 redirects for me site. Should I make them Lowercase, uppercase, or does it matter? Also, do I want to be using hyphens (-), or underscores (_)? Any other tips? EX: http://www.stupid.com/golf-slippers.html OR http://www.stupid.com/Golf-Slippers.html
Technical SEO | | JustinStupid0 -
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