Pagination Tag and Canonical
-
Once and for all - I would really like to get a few opinions regarding what is the best method working for you.
For most of the all timers in here there's no need to introduce the pagination tag. The big question for me is regarding the canonical tag in those case. There are 2 options, as far as I consider:
Options 1 will be implementing canonical tag directing to the main category page:
For instance:
In this case all the three URL's will direct to the main category which is
Option 2 - using self-referral canonical for every page.
In this case - example.com/shoes?page=2 will direct its canonical tag to example.com/shoes?page=2 and so on.
What's the logic behind this? To make sure there are no floating pages onsite. If I'll use canonical that directs to the main category (option 1) then these pages won't get indexed and techniclly there won't be any indexed links to these pages.
Your opinion?
-
As I claimed, it's a discussion not yes or no answer. Here are my two cents -
I usually use the self-referral canonical to avoid and more duplicates, just like any other pages.
I'll give you a quick example:
Lets say you have this page: example.com/shoes?p=1
In case I use the other filters onsite (very common to eCommerce sites) it might look like this:
example.com/shoes?p=1&type=nike&color=red
To avoid this I use the self-referral canonical anyway.
-
My view differs from the other views posted. I prefer to rel canonical the paginated pages to the index. The reason why is for user experience and landing page optimization. A paginated page generally if landed on from a search results in a poor user experience. Plus generally in an ecommerce shop the products are changing and moving around so it is hard to rank for anything in particular. So I have just dropped trying to rank them. I simply point the canonical on the paginated pages to the main category root.
One thing I also do is have a description and image on the category root as well, I hide that on the paginated pages to and opt for a more product centric view.
The canonical pointing back to the main category landing page can been seen in a lot of ecommerce sites these days. Like walmart, http://www.walmart.com/browse/home-improvement/air-conditioners/1072864_133032_133026?page=2&cat_id=1072864_133032_133026 This should link you to page 2 of the air conditioners category, but the canonical will take you to page 1.
You can observe the same thing with Target.com as well. Theirs is a little bit harder to paste since they use a filtered type result on their category pages, but here is one http://www.target.com/sb/car-seats-baby/-/N-5xtlxZ55pdd#navigation=true&category=5xtlx&searchTerm=&view_type=medium&sort_by=bestselling&faceted_value=55pdd&offset=60&pageCount=60&response_group=Items&isLeaf=false&parent_category_id=5xtly&custom_price=false&min_price=from&max_price=to It cannonicals back to the main category page, even though it is actually a sub category.
As far as I know Amazon is one of the only companies that still canonicals to paginated pages.
-
Hi there
Have you read through Google's Indicate pagination resource? This is a quite comprehensive resource and can give you a bit more direction in what you want to implement. Moz also has a great resource that can help in this area as well.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Hi Shahar,
The best resource for you to look at is here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
That will answer your questions perfectly, but in what you say here "using self-referral canonical for every page." this is not correct when using pagination here.
"Specifying a rel=canonical from page 2 (or any later page) to page 1 is not correct use of rel=canonical, as these are not duplicate pages. Using rel=canonical in this instance would result in the content on pages 2 and beyond not being indexed at all."
I hope this helps.
-Andy
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
-
H Tags in Menu
Hi I am checking the H2 tags on this page https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/dollies-load-movers-door-skates I have noticed my dev team have implemented H2's on the categories in the menu. Will this completely confuse Google as to what that page is about? In my opinion those links shouldn't be heading tags at all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Pagination, Javascript & SEO
Hi I need some help identifying whether we need to rethink the way we paginated product pages, On this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches when clicking page 1,2, etc - we have javascript to sort the results, the URL displayed and the URL linked to are different. e.g. The URL for these paginated pages is for example: page2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Then the arrows either side of pagination, link to the paginated landing page e.g. http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 - this is where the rel/prev details are - done for Google However - when clicking on this arrow, the URL loaded is different again - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:60&orderBy:5&pageView:list& & doesn't take you http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 I did not set this up, but I am concerned that the URL http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 never actually loads, but it's linked to Google can crawl it. Is this a problem? I am looking to implement a view all option. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Duplicate Content Errors new website. How do you know which page to put the rel canonical tag on?
I am having problems with duplicate content. This is a new website and all the pages have the same page and domain rank, the following is an example of the homepage. How do you know which page to use the canonical tag on? http://medresourcesupply.com/index.php http://medresourcesupply.com/ Would this be the correct way to use this? Here is another example where Moz says these are duplicates. I can't figure out why because they have different url's and content. http://medresourcesupply.com/clutching_at_the_throat http://medresourcesupply.com/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=detailed_specfications &category=Main
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | artscube.biz0 -
Interesting Cross Domain Canonical Quirk...
We recently ran cross domain canonicals for 2 of our websites. What's interesting is that when I do a search for ""site:domain1.com "product name"" the Title in the SERPs uses the Domain Name from the site the page has been canonicaled to. So the title for Domain1 (for the search term above) looks like this: Product Name | Keywords | Domain 2 Interesting quirk. Ha anyone else seen this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Pagination and View All Pages Question. We currently don't have a canonical tag pointing to View all as I don't believe it's a good user experience so how best we deal with this.
Hello All, I have an eCommerce site and have implemented the use rel="prev" and rel="next" for Page Pagination. However, we also have a View All which shows all the products but we currently don't have a canonical tag pointing to this as I don't believe showing the user a page with shed loads of products on it is actually a good user experience so we havent done anything with this page. I have a sample url from one of our categories which may help - http://goo.gl/9LPDOZ This is obviously causing me duplication issues as well . Also , the main category pages has historically been the pages which ranks better as opposed to Page 2, Page 3 etc etc. I am wondering what I should do about the View All Page and has anyone else had this same issue and how did they deal with it. Do we just get rid of the View All even though Google says it prefers you to have it ? I also want to concentrate my link juice on the main category pages as opposed being diluted between all my paginated pages ? - Does anyone have any tips on how to best do this and have you seen any ranking improvement from this ? Any ideas greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Can anyone see any issues with the canonical tags on this web site?
The main domain is: http://www.eumom.ie/ And these would be some of the core pages: http://www.eumom.ie/pregnancy/ http://www.eumom.ie/getting-pregnant/ Any help from the Moz community is much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IcanAgency0 -
Tags, categories or both?
There is so much debate regarding duplicate content, horror stories, losing visitors, being penalized, yada yada... that I am wandering if it's wise to use tags/categories on a WordPress blog. I saw that all major blogs are using these structuring etiquettes and they are all dofollow and meta robots on index, follow. What do you say? It is wise to use tags, categories or both? Should I nofollow them, noindex or follow and index? Or noindex follow? Cheers and thx.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasmin280 -
Pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“prev”
Hey mozzers Would be interested to know if anyone has used the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” attributes more info here http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html If you have used it, has it worked and what are your thoughts etc:? And for those that have used it, is it a better way of handling pagination other than the obvious of Google saying so. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0