Use of Rel=Canonical
-
I have been pondering whether I am using this tag correctly or not. We have a custom solution which lays out products in the typical eCommerce style with plenty of tick box filters to further narrow down the view.
When I last researched this it seemed like a good idea to implement rel=canonical to point all sub section pages at a 'view-all' page which returns all the products unfiltered for that given section.
Normally pages are restricted down to 9 results per page with interface options to increase that. This combined with all the filters we offer creates many millions of possible page permutations and hence the need for the Canonical tag.
I am concerned because our view-all pages get large, returning all of that section's product into one place.If I pointed the view-all page at say the first page of x results would that defeat the object of the view-all suggestion that Google made a few years back as it would require further crawling to get at all the data?
Alternatively as these pages are just product listings, would NoIndex be a better route to go given that its unlikely they will get much love in Google anyway?
-
Thanks for your replies, they were very helpful.
After watching and reading I have decided that I need to implement rel="next" and rel="prev" in such a way that we handle multiple filters (facets) and sorting options so "to essentially pretend that only one version of the order/sort variable exists in every situation, and knock out the rest", that way Google will pickup rel=next sets for each facet on its own.
The video made it clear that big view-all pages aren't great if there is a chance they will take time to load.
-
Thats a pretty good video, hadn't seen it before. Check out this article for another good rundown on using rel canonical and prev/next and implementation: http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/conquering-pagination-guide.html using them both alone or in combination depending on the situation is certainly the best way to approach this issue.
-
Check this video for pagination: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=njn8uXTWiGg
When filtering use a canonical tag.
Check how big shops handle those issue's.
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
-
Do cross domain rel canonical and original source tags have to be the same?
I have placed content on a partner site using the same content that is on my site. I want the link juice from the site and the canonical tag points back to my site. However, they are also using the original source tag as they publish a lot of news. If they have the original source tag as the page on their site and the canonical as mine, is this killing the link juice from the canonical and putting me in jeopardy of a duplicate content penalty? Google has already started indexing the page on their site with the same content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SecuritiesCE0 -
How and When Should I use Canonical Url Tags?
Pretty new to the SEO universe. But I have not used any canonical tags, just because there is not definitive source explaining exactly when and why you should use them??? Am I the only one who feels this way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenrushdaily0 -
Canonicals question ref canonicals pointing to redundant urls
Hi, SCENARIO: A site has say 3 examples of the same product page but with different urls because that product fits into 3 different categories e.g. /tools/hammer /handtools/hammer /specialoffers/hammer and lets say the first 2 of those have the canonical pointing to /specialoffers/hammer YET that page is now redundant e.g. the webmaster decided to do away with the /specialoffers/ folder. ASSUMPTIONS: That is going to seriously hamper the chances of the 2 remaining versions of the hammer page being able to rank as they have canonicals pointing to a url that no longer exists. The canonical tags should be changed to point to 1 of the remaining url versions. As an added complication - lets say /specialoffers/hammer still exists, the url works, but just isn't navigable from the site. Thoughts/feedback welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Meta-description not used at all times
Hi all We are marketing an e-commerce site and seem to have a weird issue. For some reason the clearly specified meta description is not being used in the SERPs. Had a look in the source but all tags seems to be there. The site can be found here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Resultify
www.bangerhead.se A sample search in Google that uses the wrong info in the SERP:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C5CHFA_enSE548SE548&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&q=bangerhead Any ideas to why this is? Grateful for any inputHave a nice day Fredrik0 -
Does Google crawl and spider for other links in rel=canonical pages?
When you add rel=canonical to the page, will Google still crawl your page for content and discover new links in that page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReferralCandy0 -
How would you use this broken link building opportunity?
I've found a good opportunity to build some links and I'd love your opinions on my options here. There's a big event that happens once a year in my city. Let's say the event used to have a website called www.CityEvent.com. The event decided not to use this website anymore, but instead to put all of their event information on their facebook page. It looks like they let their domain name expire and someone else snapped it up. It's now sitting as an empty wordpress blog with one line of text. This empty website has 1300 links pointing to it. I can see two opportunities here: 1. Write a very thorough article on my website (that I am trying to build links to) describing the event and giving people all of the information that they need to know about it. (The amount of information on the Facebook page is minimal.) or 2. Create a new website called www.EventCity.com and put up a static page with all of the information that people need to know. There would be a link on this page pointing to the site that I am trying to rank. In both cases there would be much more information than is available on the Facebook page including a collection of youtube videos about the event and many helpful links for people who are interested in this type of event. Then the plan is to contact the sites who are linking to the dead page and invite them to link to my new page (either on my site or the new site that I could create). I see a few pros and cons to each method. For option #2 I think people would be more likely to link to a more official looking page rather than an article on a separate website. (My website has information about the city in question but is not closely related to the event at all.) However, I would only be getting one link back to my site. One negative to this is that the actual organizers of the event may not be pleased that someone has created an official looking page. But then again, perhaps they would be happy to have a free website. For option #1 I would possibly get more links from sites that are authoritative in my city that point directly to the site I am trying to rank. However, people would be less likely to link to us because we are not an official site for the event, but simply a very good article about the event. There are no other good articles for this event that are ranking on Google. Hopefully that makes sense. What would you do? EDIT - Just thought of a third option - try to buy the domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0 -
Canonical issue with my Home Page
Hi, My site has several canonical issues that should be fixed. http://www.crosscountryallied.com For my Home Page, more links are pointing at www.crosscountryallied.com/ (887) than http:// http://www.crosscountryallied.com/ctAlliedWebSite (27). It is recommended that I implement a 301 redirect to recapture a significant amount of link value. The following lists show the most common canonicalization errors that can be produced when using default settings on my web server: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6 (IIS): http://www.crosscountryallied.com/ http://www.crosscountryallied.com/default.jsp (or .jsp depending on the version) http://crosscountryallied.com/ http://crosscountryallied.com/default.jsp or any combination with different capitalization. Each of these URLs spreads out the value of backlinks to our homepage. Should I just redirect them to: http://www.crosscountryallied.com and add a canonical tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
Any penalty for having rel=canonical tags on every page?
For some reason every webpage of our website (www.nathosp.com) has a rel=canonical tag. I'm not sure why the previous SEO manager did this, but we don't have any duplicate content that would require a canonical tag. Should I remove these tags? And if so, what's the advantage - or disadvantage of leaving them in place? Thank you in advance for your help. -Josh Fulfer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhans1