Dynamic Canonical Tag for Search Results Filtering Page
-
Hi everyone,
I run a website in the travel industry where most users land on a location page (e.g. domain.com/product/location, before performing a search by selecting dates and times. This then takes them to a pre filtered dynamic search results page with options for their selected location on a separate URL (e.g. /book/results).
The /book/results page can only be accessed on our website by performing a search, and URL's with search parameters from this page have never been indexed in the past.
We work with some large partners who use our booking engine who have recently started linking to these pre filtered search results pages. This is not being done on a large scale and at present we only have a couple of hundred of these search results pages indexed.
I could easily add a noindex or self-referencing canonical tag to the /book/results page to remove them, however it’s been suggested that adding a dynamic canonical tag to our pre filtered results pages pointing to the location page (based on the location information in the query string) could be beneficial for the SEO of our location pages.
This makes sense as the partner websites that link to our /book/results page are very high authority and any way that this could be passed to our location pages (which are our most important in terms of rankings) sounds good, however I have a couple of concerns.
• Is using a dynamic canonical tag in this way considered spammy / manipulative?
• Whilst all the content that appears on the pre filtered /book/results page is present on the static location page where the search initiates and which the canonical tag would point to, it is presented differently and there is a lot more content on the static location page that isn’t present on the /book/results page. Is this likely to see the canonical tag being ignored / link equity not being passed as hoped, and are there greater risks to this that I should be worried about?
I can’t find many examples of other sites where this has been implemented but the closest would probably be booking.com.
Canonical points to
https://www.booking.com/city/gb/london.it.html
In our scenario however there is a greater difference between the content on both pages (and booking.com have a load of search results pages indexed which is not what we’re looking for)
Would be great to get any feedback on this before I rule it out.
Thanks!
-
No upvotes for the righteous?
-
@GAnalytics said in Dynamic Canonical Tag for Search Results Filtering Page:
Is using a dynamic canonical tag in this way considered spammy / manipulative?
I believe that it's fine to do that. But I would still avoid indexing duplicate content in google. Index the best one and remove the others, won't affect your backlinks.
-
@webduh I agree with you. I have also used this strategy for the website and it is working fine. Thank you for sharing with us.
Brody Nienow from: https://whiteroseshub.com/ -
@GAnalytics The search filtered pages appear to have value added to me. a Solar Installation Company Fafco.com uses a calendar that points to events that don't exist and ranks for hundreds of words for it. I think you should be fine. Please feel free to backlink Webduh.com if this advice helps
David with Webduh.com
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
-
Canonical urls - do my web pages need them?
Hello, I'm going round in circles with this issue, so hopefully someone can help... The Moz crawl of my website lists a number of pages as "missing canonical url". The pages are all different and do not have similar content. Do I need to add a canonical url to each page? My agency quoted the following (x referencing this page: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/consolidate-duplicate-urls) list itemYou would use Canonical URLs if: list item"...you have a single page that's accessible by multiple URLs, or different pages with similar content (for example, a page with both a mobile and a desktop version), Google sees these as duplicate versions of the same page." list itemThis is not the case here and so we would not propose to change anything. We could add Canonical URLs if the client feels that it is critical which occurs an additional cost. Any help / advice much appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
Unsolved Moz Pro crawl signaling missing canonical which are not?
Hi,
Moz Pro | | rolandvintners
I'm trying MozPro considering using it.
One of the tool which is appealing is the crawl and insights.
After quick use, I really question many of the alerts, for instance, I got a "missing canonical tag" on this url: https://vintners.co/wine/grawu_gto#2020 but when I check my markup, there's clearly a canonical tag: <link rel="canonical" href="https://vintners.co/wine/grawu_gto"> Anybody can explain?
I asked Moz Pro staff when being onboarded but didn't get an answer...
Honestly, I'm questioning the value of these crawls, or may be I miss something?0 -
Google Search Console - Excluded Pages and Multiple Properties
I have used Moz to identify keywords that are ideal for my website and then I optimized different pages for those keywords, but unfortunately rankings for some of the pages have declined. Since I am working with an ecommerce site, I read that having a lot of Excluded pages on the Google Search Console was to be expected so I initially ignored them. However, some of the pages I was trying to optimize are listed there, especially under the 'Crawled - currently not indexed' and the 'Discovered - currently not indexed' sections. I have read this page (link: https://moz.com/blog/crawled-currently-not-indexed-coverage-status ) and plan on focusing on Steps 5 & 7, but wanted to ask if anyone else has had experience with these issues. Also, does anyone know if having multiple properties (https vs http, www vs no www) can negatively affect a site? For example, could a sitemap from one property overwrite another? Would removing one property from the Console have any negative impact on the site? I plan on asking these questions on a Google forum, but I wanted to add it to this post in case anyone here had any insights. Thank you very much for your time,
SEO Tactics | | ForestGT
Forest0 -
"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to Google Ads costs
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
Paid Search Marketing | | Alex_Pisa
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Naturally this si reflected in ""Duplicate without user-selected canonical” . Issue
We create the same ad in Google Ads for 2 domains. So the content is mostly identical, ads are identical, target URLs differ only in domain. Yet Google Ads “Quality score” is different (10/10 vs. 6/10) and “Landing page experience” is very different (Above average vs. Average). Some members of our team think lower “Landing page experience” increases the Google Ads costs, which I personally don't believe, but I want to double check. Question: Can “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” issue decrease the “Landing page experience” rating and as result can it cause higher Google ads costs? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.0 -
My translated pages are categorized as subpages of the originals / Importance of hreflang tags
Hi there We have a website that is originally in German, but has an English translation for all pages.
Technical SEO | | Jess_Smunch
I recently created a crawl map for it, which showed that all our translated pages are indexed as subpages of the German originals. I wonder if this is normal, or if it will have a negative impact on our SEO. If they are subpages, will Google still index and rank them with the same importance as the originals?
If not, what can I do to make them standalone pages and not subpages? Also, we have a few issues with hreflang tags that we cannot fix easily as our CMS does not give us a flexible option for editing our code. I wonder how much impact hreflang tags have on our ranking and if we can just disregards these issues? We use Hubspot as a CMS, if that matters. Thanks for your feedback!0 -
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 -
Optimising multiple pages for the same search term
We were having a discussion on title tags and optimising multiple pages for the same term. We rank well for the phrase 'chanel glasses' which points to our Chanel brand page. The Chanel brand page is optimised for this term, and has the phrase 'Chanel glasses' at the front of its title tag. Previously, the title tag on our home page had the words 'Chanel glasses' at the start in an attempt to rank twice for the term (as one of our competitors has managed). This never worked (though at the time, our DA/PA was lower than it is now). For this reason I switched the title tag on the homepage to try and rank for 'designer glasses'. My belief is, given we already rank highly for the term on a more relevant landing page, trying to rank for it again on the home page is not the best use of a title tag on our highest PA page. We may as well use it for something more generic like 'designer glasses' (though this term does not convert nearly as well, nor does it currently rank as well for us as we've not been attempting to get 'designer glasses' as anchor text. Plus it's more competitive. Another generic term maybe be preferable). My colleague's view is we should attempt to do what our competitor has done and try and rank twice on page one for this term. I like the idea of dominating the top results, but I feel that since attempting to get double-listed hasn't worked for us so far, we should use the homepage for optimising for a different term ( ideally something that we don't already rank for elsewhere on the site). I see his point of view - if we were ranking nowhere for the search term then, yes we should concentrate on getting one page to rank, not two. But since we already rank well for the term, perhaps his strategy is preferable? Just for clarity, the title tags are not duplicate, but the idea was to share many of the same keywords between the two title tags. What are your thoughts SEOmoz?
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
Canonical Tag Pointing To The Same URL
Does it matter if a canonical tag points to the URL in which the tag is on? Example Page: http://www.domain.com Canonical tag: rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com" /> I only ask because a client of mine has a CMS that automatically does that to every page on the site and there's no way to remove it. Will this have a negative impact or does it not matter at all? Any insights would be great because I can't find a clear answer anywhere online. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0