Is a Rel="cacnonical" page bad for a google xml sitemap
-
Back in March 2011 this conversation happened.
Rand: You don't want rel=canonicals.
Duane: Only end state URL. That's the only thing I want in a sitemap.xml. We have a very tight threshold on how clean your sitemap needs to be. When people are learning about how to build sitemaps, it's really critical that they understand that this isn't something that you do once and forget about. This is an ongoing maintenance item, and it has a big impact on how Bing views your website. What we want is end state URLs and we want hyper-clean. We want only a couple of percentage points of error.
Is this the same with Google?
-
LOL thanks!
-
You're very welcome.
And just try to think about it this way... every best practice you employ for your site is another best practice your competitors have to employ to keep up with you
-
Yes I understand that. It is just a lot more work for us to do with our site map! Thanks for your advice.
-
To clarify, when I say rel="canonical" pages, I mean pages that are using that link tag to point to another page (i.e., the pages that are NOT the canonical page). These are also the pages that Duane and Rand were talking about.
I am not saying you shouldn't include pages that are included in the actual link tag.
Let's assume you have 3 pages: A, B, and C.
Pages B and C have a rel="canonical" link that points to A.
In this scenario, you would include A in your XML Sitemap (assuming A is a high-quality page that is important to your site), and you would NOT include B and C.
-
I see. but the rel="canonical" pages are good page. I get the broken links and all that part but I guess i do not agree with rel="canonical" as much. I can see their standpoint. Do you do a lot with your site map and assign the different values to different pages?
-
Yes, it is safe to assume that all search engines want your XML Sitemaps to be as clean and accurate as possible.
XML Sitemaps give you an opportunity to tell search engines about your most important pages, and you want to take advantage of this opportunity.
Think about it another way. Let's pretend your site and Google are both real people. In that hypothetical world, Google's first impression of your site is established through your site's XML Sitemaps. If those Sitemaps are full of broken links, redirecting URLs, and rel="canonical" pages, your site has already made a bad first impression ("If this site can't maintain an up-to-date Sitemap, I'm terrified of what I'll find once I get to the actual pages").
On the other hand, if your XML Sitemaps are full of live links that point to your site's most important pages, Google will have a positive first impression and continue on with the relationship
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
-
Query on Sitemap xml Root Path
Is it compulsory to have sitemap.xml at this path - abcd.com/sitemap.xml? My sitename is abcd.com. Now is it compulsory to have sitemap.xml at this path - abcd.com/sitemap.xml only? a) If i take cnd services where path can be like xyz.com/sitemap.xml and then this sitemap i can submit in robot file so it is fine? b) What will happen here in webmaster tool as in webmaster tool when we submit sitemap by default it gives us domain name like abcd.com and we have to just add /sitemap.xml
Technical SEO | | Johny123450 -
"Moz encountered an error on one or more pages on your site" Error
I have been receiving this error for a while: "Moz encountered an error on one or more pages on your site" It's a Multi-Lingual Wordpress website, the robots.txt is set to allow crawlers on all links and I have followed the same process for other website I've done yet I'm receiving this error for this site.
Technical SEO | | JustinZimri0 -
Google Indexing Pages with Made Up URL
Hi all, Google is indexing a URL on my site that doesn't exist, and never existed in the past. The URL is completely made up. Anyone know why this is happening and more importantly how to get rid of it. Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | brian-madden0 -
Sitemap errors have disappeared from my Google Webmaster tools
Hi all, A week ago I had 66 sitemap errors related to href langs in my GWT. Now, all the errors are gone, and it shows no errors. We have not done any work to fix the errors. I wonder if anybody has experienced the same thing, of Google suddenly changing the criteria or the way they report on errors in Google Webmaster Tools. I would appreciate any insights from the community! Best regards Peru
Technical SEO | | SMVSEO0 -
How do I influence what page on my site google shows for specific search phrases?
Hi People, My client has a site www.activeadventures.com. They provide adventure tours of New Zealand, South America and the Himalayas. These destinations are split into 3 folders in the site (eg: activeadventures.com/new-zealand, activeadventures.com/south-america etc....). The actual root folder of the site is generic information for all of the destinations whilst the destination specific folders are specific in their information for the destination in question. The Problem: If you search for say "Active New Zealand" or "Adventure Tours South America" our result that comes up is the activeadventures.com homepage rather than the destination folder homepage (eg: We would want activeadventures.com/new-zealand to be the landing page for people searching for "active new zealand"). Are there any ways in influence google as to what page on our site it chooses to serve up? Many thanks in advance. Conrad
Technical SEO | | activenz0 -
Google caching the "cookie law message"
Hello! So i've been looking at the cached text version of our website. (Google Eyes is a great add on for this) One thing I've noticed is that, Google caches our EU Cookie Law message. The message appears on the top of the page and Google is caching this. The message is enclosed within and but it still is being cached. I'm going to ask the development mean to move the message at the bottom of the page and fix the position, but reviewing other websites with cookie messages, Google isn't caching them in their text only versions. Any tips or advice?
Technical SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
How unique does a page need to be to avoid "duplicate content" issues?
We sell products that can be very similar to one another. Product Example: Power Drill A and Power Drill A1 With these two hypothetical products, the only real difference from the two pages would be a slight change in the URL and a slight modification in the H1/Title tag. Are these 2 slight modifications significant enough to avoid a "duplicate content" flagging? Please advise, and thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | WhiteCap0 -
Does Google follow links in "id" tag?
Hello, For functionality purposes, I need to wrap separate blocks of content with a tag. The main question is whether Google will follow this URL, even though it is not a hyperlink on the page, just a URL used for functionality purposes. We will have 10-20 of these types of span tags with a different URL for each one, and we just want to be sure that Google will not be following these URLs that are not links. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0