How to Specify Canonical Link Element for Better Performing?
-
I read Google webmaster centeral's blog post and help article about rel="canonical" which was compiled by Matt.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
I am working on eCommerce website and found too many duplicate pages with same product as follow.
1. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_62_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
2. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
3. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_55_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
4. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_57_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
5. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
6. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_56_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
7. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_63_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
8. www.lampslightingandmore.com/63_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
9. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
10. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_58_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
11. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_59_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.htmlI have consider 1st product as a primary product and set following rel canonical tag on remaining products. Primary product also contain following rel canonical tag.
This was my experience to set canonical tag. But, I am not able to see any improvement on crawling. I was in that assumption due to duplication Google did not crawled my pages. But, Now what is problem with it? How can I fix it and specify proper canonical link element for better crawling?
Note: I am working to compile unique content on each product pages and make it live very soon.
-
I got it.... I am going to implement as previous one. Thanks for your prompt reply.
-
Hi!
My suggestion is to never eliminate the canonical tag, as it could also prevent scrapers' stealing content without attribution.
-
@Gianluca Fiorelli
I have added following Meta in all duplicate products [2 to 11] exclude primary product [1].
I have marked this question as answered but raise one question after observe source code of all product pages. I have implemented following canonical on all duplicate product pages pointing to unique product.
So, now is it require on duplicate pages? Can I remove it from entire website? Because, duplication will not occur due to prevention of indexing for all duplicate products.
Note: I am still surviving from crawling issue. My crawling is still very slow and only 113 pages were indexed by Google.
-
It's manufacturer part number.
-
From what I see, yes.
Just a question: what em89917-x2. in this product URL
http://www.spiderofficechairs.com/officechairs-officestarproducts-em89917-x2.html
corresponds to? product's id?
-
Are you talking like this?
I have fix URL structure for all products and manipulate that product in multiple categories.
There will no change in URL structure.
-
Mmm, that could be an idea, but maybe it not the best one. From what I see, the reason of the duplicated content is because the same product is listed in different categories and sub-categories. What I would do is to strip the category id in the URLs, and - when it comes to products - have this kind of URL: www.domain.com/product This way, no matter the category, there will be always just one product URL and no duplication issue. Done that, I would 301 all the old duplicates urls.
-
You are 100% right. I am not able to see significant changes in crawling after 4 days of implementation. I am thinking to add meta for robots with noindex, nofollow specification on all duplicate product page.
Google will crawl and index only primary product. [That's unique one.] What you think about it? Will it work for me or not?
-
No, I don't want to index duplicate pages. And, not able to define unique attributes on all duplicate pages. Can you suggest me any alternative?
-
Maybe I wrongly understood you, so I beg you pardon if my answers is not useful.
From what I understood you have ton of duplicate product pages. So you decided you use rel="canonical" in order to say to the SE that all the 99 product pages of 100 are dupes of the first one.
That means that you are suggesting (rel="canonical" is not a command, but a strong indication/suggestion to the search engines) to not consider for indexing those 99, but just the 1 canonical page.
Therefore, if your problem is to have SE crawling all your pages, and you consider those product pages as to be crawled, therefore canonical tag is not the right thing to do.
If you want all those duplicates to be indexed... then you should have to differentiate all of them, making them unique, as you write in your note.
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
-
Is Link equity / Link Juice lost to a blocked URL in the same way that it is lost to nofollow link
Hi If there is a link on a page that goes to a URL that is blocked in robots txt - is the link juice lost in the same way as when you add nofollow to a link on a page. Any help would be most appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew-SEO0 -
Are These Links Junk?
I hired an SEO to create incoming links to me website insisting that only white hat techniques be used. The SEO was highly recommended by a family friend. In 3 months about 14 links to my site were obtained. The URLs for the domains where the links originate are below. I paid $8,000 for the services of the SEO provider to create the links over 4 months. When I looked at the links more carefully I noticed that the sites did not seem to have owners. That there was no phone number, physical address and scant information about ownership. I also noticed that most pages had outgoing links of a promotional nature. Also, that content created for me had grammatical and occasional spelling errors. The links did not look bad in terms of MOZ domain authority and MOZ page authority, but when I went subscribed to AHREFS a few days ago and evaluated the links, I noticed that the URL rating (somewhat equivalent to MOZ page authority) was really low. Furthermore, noticed that one of the domains solicits paid links from gambling sites. The SEO who sourced the links on my behalf says he will explain why I "have nothing to worry about". Dividing his monthly fee by the number of links and I paid $571 per link. Is it possible the the below domains could have pages that I would want links from? Would these links be potentially worth more than a few hundred dollars? O are these sites more like a cheap PBN or maybe "the hoth". If the links are in fact good I would be delighted. But if they are of poor quality could I legitimately ask for a refund? Also, are these domains so bad that it is imperative for me to get the links removed? <colgroup><col width="198"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
| https://www.equities.com |
| http://www.realestaterama.com |
| https://moneyinc.com |
| https://homebusinessmag.com |
| http://digitalconnectmag.com |
| https://suburbanfinance.com/ |
| http://www.homebunch.com |
| http://inman.com |
| https://www.propertytalk.com/ |
| http://activerain.com |
| https://www.conservativedailynews.com/ |
| http://moneyforlunch.com/ |
| http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/ |
| https://www.tgdaily.com/ |
| |0 -
Would you pursue this paid directory link?
Hi all, I KNOW the hard and true answer to this, but I'm looking for deeper insights regarding Links like those contained on this page. I understand the by-the-book answer to this would be only pursue a paid link if it is "nofollowed" OR if it has the potential to bring in new business and traffic. My question is ....does a link like this actually pass SEO value? I see businesses killing it from an SEO standpoint with link profiles full of paid directory links like this. I also thought this conversation was more interested now that Google appears to devaluing links like this instead of issue penalties. Thoughts??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Canonical OR redirect
Hi, i've a site about sport which cover matches. for each match i've a page. last week there was a match between: T1 v T2 so a page was created: www.domain.com/match/T1vT2 - Page1 this week T2 host T1, so there's a new page www.domain.com/match/T2vT1 - Page2 each page has a unique content with Authorship, but the URL, Title, Description, H1 look very similar cause the only difference is T2 word before T1. though Page2 is available for a few days, on site links & sitemap, for the search query "T2 T1 match" Page1 appears on the SERP (high location). of course i want Page2 to be on SERP for the above query cause it's the relevant match. i even don't see Page2 anywhere on the SERP and i think it wasn't indexed. Questions: 1. do you think google see both pages as duplicated though the content is different? 2. is there a difference when you search for T1 vs T2 OR T2 vs T1 ? 3. should i redirect 301 Page1 to Page2? consider that all content for Page1 and the Authorship G+ will be lost. 4. should i make rel=canonical on Page1 to Page2? 5. should i let google sort it out? i know it's a long one, thanks for your patience. Thanks, Assaf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stassaf0 -
Excessive navigation links
I'm working on the code for a collaborative project that will eventually have hundreds of pages. The editor of this project wants all pages to be listed in the main navigation at the top of the site. There are four main dropdown (suckerfish-style) menus and these have nested sub- and sub-sub-menus. Putting aside the UI issues this creates, I'm concerned about how Google will find our content on the page. Right now, we now have over 120 links above the main content of the page and have plans to add more as time goes on (as new pages are created). Perhaps of note, these navigation elements are within an html5 <nav>element: <nav id="access" role="navigation"> Do you think that Google is savvy enough to overlook the "abundant" navigation links and focus on the content of the page below? Will the <nav>element help us get away with this navigation strategy? Or should I reel some of these navigation pages into categories? As you might surmise the site has a fairly flat structure, hence the lack of category pages.</nav> </nav> </nav>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boxcarpress1 -
What is the best way to link between all my portals?
Hi I own 12 different portals within gambling, they do more or less work and feel like this one, Casinotopplisten, what is the best way for me to link between all of them? Since there is alot going on in Google these days I havent linked between the sites at all, but i feel that to be a somewhat waste. So here is my three ideas so far, in ranked order: Add a menu at the topp right of the site, or footer, that links to the 10 different sites with different languages. The text link should then only be "Norwegian, Swedish, English etc.." Basiclly the same as about, but in addition linking to the "same page" in the other languages. As all pages have the same article set for startes this can be done. Dont do any linking between the sites and only link to the sites separately from our company blog/site.. Dont link at all. I should add that all of these sites are on different IPs with different domains and all in different languages. Hope someone can add their 2c on this one.. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MortenBratli0 -
Measurement of Link Value
Over the past few months I have encountered webmasters who claim to be using instruments far better than open site explorer but they will not disclose what they are. Are there better ways of determining the value of a link than OSE? Is "link juice" more important than page/domain authority where the link resides? Or vice-vesa. Any help understanding this would be appreciated. I do not want to offend other webmasters but I also do not want to be fooled by them either while negotiating a link exchange with them
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Is having a canonical tag for the link that IS the canonical a negative thing?
Throughout our site, canonical tags have been added where needed. However, the canonical tags are also included for the canonical itself. For example, for www.askaquestion.com, the canonical tag has been added as www.askaquestion.com. Will this have a negative impact or does it not really matter whether there is such a loop?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbbseo0