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
-
Alternate page with proper canonical tag Status: Excluded in Google webmaster tools.
In Google Webmaster Tools, I have a coverage issue. I am getting this error message: Alternate page with proper canonical tag Status: Excluded. It gives the below blog post page as an example. Any idea how to resolve? At one time, I was using handl utm grabber, but the plugin is deactivated on my website. https://www.savacations.com/turrialba-costa-ricas-garden-city/?utm_source=deleted&utm_medium=deleted&utm_term=deleted&utm_content=deleted&utm_campaign=deleted&gclid=deleted5.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alancito0 -
Are there any downsides to using a canonical tag temporarily?
I'm working on redesigning our website. One of the content types has a main archive page (/success-stories) containing all of the success stories (written by graduates of our program). Because we plan to have success stories for other people (non-graduates), I'm using category hierarchies (/success-stories/graduates and success-stories/nonprofits, for example). It will go one level deeper to organize graduates by graduation year (/success-stories/graduates/%year%). I think this will work out well. However, we won't have non-graduate success stories for a little while, probably at least a few weeks, which means that /success-stories and /.../graduates indices will contain the same content for a while. So my question is this: Will it hurt to use a canonical tag that points to /success-stories/graduates as the authority until the main archive page contains more than just graduates? Or would it be better to use a 302 redirect from /success-stories to /.../graduates until more diverse content is added?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bcaples0 -
Dealing with Canonical tag in volusion
Hi We have an ecommerce site where we have some returns/scratch /dented products identical to the original one. The onpage content of the damaged/original is pretty much identical with the damaged just having a describing the damage. I had wanted to make a canonical tag on the damaged product to the original so it would not be a problem of duplicate content but as it is a volusion site we dont have that option - it only canonicalizes back to itself! Any ideas what else I can do - cant really change the content much and I dont really want to deindex it so people find it? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | henya0 -
Canonical tag - link juice to the frontpage
I only wants to be 100% sure about using the canonical tag.. I want to use it on pages that rankes together with the frontpage in Google, but i only want the frontpage to rank alone and to have the link juice from the other 2 sites direct-ed to the frontpage.. Hope you agre that its the correct way to doo so?? Wich one is correct: http://www.testtest.com/”> Or this http://www.testtest.com/”/>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopeter290 -
Affiliate & canonicals
Hi, any help with this one would be great.... www.example.com sells widgets online. They are also promoted on a 3rd party website www.partner.com. Currently www.partner.com links to a page on www.example.com that is completely branded with the 'partners' design, style and unique copy (you would think you were still on 'partner' website). I saw this interesting article from 2011: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-seo-value-from-your-affiliate-links (in particular idea 1) Do you think adding a rel=canonical on www.example.com's partner page is still safe? All the best & thank you, Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5550 -
Bad use of the Rel="canonical" tag
Google is currently ranking my category page instead of our homepage for our key term and we would rather have our homepage rank for the term. Would it be a bad idea to rel="canonical" our category page to our homepage? Our homepage is optimized to rank for the keyword and has more PR than our category page. However, I don't really know if this will have negative repercussions. Thanks, Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jason_3420 -
Which index page should I canonical to?
Hello! I'm doing a routine clean up of my code and had a question about the canonical tag. On the index page, I have the following: I have never put any thought into which index path is the best to use. http://www.example.com http://www.example.com/ http://www.example.com/index.php Could someone shed some light on this for me? Does it make a difference? Thanks! Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan_Phillips1 -
How canonical url harm our website???
Even though my website has no similar/copied content, i used rel=canonical for all my website pages. Is Google or yahoo make any harm to my SERP's?? EX: http://www.seomoz.org is my site, in that i used canonical as rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.seomoz.org" to my home page like that similar to all pages, i created rel=canonical. Is search engine harm my website???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MadhukarSV0