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I probably had the incorrect page there for a short while--it should've been called botswana-agate-legends.htm.

So should I put a < link rel=canonical href="botswana-legends.htm"> in the CORRECT page (botswana-agate-legends.htm)? Or should I put up the OLD, incorrect page back up and put a NOINDEX and a < link rel tag pointing to the correct page (botswana-agate-legends.htm)?

So confusing and so unreal that one mistake would cause such issues.

Another option? Wait for google to hash it out and lose the link juice for a while?

Kathleen

It's REL CANONICAL "notice".

I'm getting them on pages I've changed the TITLE on. Why would I get a canonical notice on a page I only changed the meta title tag on?

I don't get it!

Kathleen

I'm getting a Temporary Redirect issue on

|

http://www.luckygemstones.com/botswana-legends.htm

http://www.luckygemstones.com/botswana-legends.htm | http://www.luckygemstones.com/page-not-found.htm | 1 | 0 | 302 |

YET! There is no such page on my site. I believe I had one once, but has been corrected for a while now.

WHY is SEOMOZ picking this up as an error and how can I fix?

Kathleen

http://www.luckygemstones.com

I just got my SEOMOZ run and it says I have a CANONICAL ERROR:

Scorpio Earrings - 7mm Stud - Sterling Silver

http://www.astrojewelry.com/jewelry/scorpio-the-scorpion-earrings-30502.htm

I'm not sure why--I only changed the <title>tag--not the URL.</span></p> <p><span class="truncated sub-url" title="http://www.astrojewelry.com/jewelry/scorpio-the-scorpion-earrings-30502.htm">Why would this generate a canonical error?</span></p> <p><span class="truncated sub-url" title="http://www.astrojewelry.com/jewelry/scorpio-the-scorpion-earrings-30502.htm">Kathleen</span></p> <p><span class="truncated sub-url" title="http://www.astrojewelry.com/jewelry/scorpio-the-scorpion-earrings-30502.htm">astrojewelry.com</span></p> <p> </p> <p> </p></title>

Here's the entire contents of my .htaccess file:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .htm

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.htm
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.htm$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L]

**IndexIgnore ***
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.luckygemstones.com/page-not-found.htm
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.luckygemstones.com/internal-serv-error.htm
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.luckygemstones.com/forbidden-request.htm
ErrorDocument 401 http://www.luckygemstones.com/not-authorized.htm

Frankly, I'm not sure what all the flags on the Rewrite lines mean. I know when I updated the index.htm code I lost serious traffic--but without it I seem to have dup content issues. I would just LOVE to be done w/this once and for all--to know it's right would be huge!

Here's the canonical tag in the index.htm file:

Is anything amiss? I will say I had no dup content issues in this week's seomoz run but the loss of traffic means google isn't liking something...

Thanks for your help, Kathleen

I implemented a 301 redirect set to the "www" version in the .htaccess (apache server)  file and my logs are DOWN 30-40%! I have to be doing something wrong!

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .htm

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.htm
RewriteRule ^(.)index.htm$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L]

IndexIgnore *
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.luckygemstones.com/page-not-found.htm
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.luckygemstones.com/internal-serv-error.htm
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.luckygemstones.com/forbidden-request.htm
ErrorDocument 401 http://www.luckygemstones.com/not-authorized.htm

I've also started adding canoncial META's to EACH page:

I'm using HMTL 4.0 loose still--1000's of pages--painful to convert to HTML5 so I left the / off the tag so it would validate.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks, Kathleen

It seems like Google would want unused/unwanted pages removed--less "junk" on the web--less irrelevance to add to their already huge index...

A long time problem I think...I will sometimes put NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW in pages I wanted removed from the index--then after a few months, delete them.

Thanks for the feedback!

So I still need the link rel tag on each page--including the 301 redirect?

So say or would the link tag require the www? I think not--but not totally clear!

We're a jewelry website--and things do sell out, so we remove the page (otherwise someone might try to order them) I have it in the sitemap to archive the pages yet still get 404 errors. I've been considering 410--but not sure how to implement...

We have literally thousands of items--so it'd be a bit of work to go over and manually remove sold out items at google every day. And what about yahoo/bing, etc?

I wonder how people handle sold outs properly.

Thx for your help!

Kathleen

I've been working on removing canonical issues. My host is Apache.

Is this the correct code for my htaccess?

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L]

SECOND!!! I have two websites under Google's Webmaster Central;

http://luckygemstones.com which gets NO 404 soft errors...

AND

http://www.luckygemstones.com which has 247 soft 404 errors...

I think I should DELETE the http://luckygemstones.com site from Webmaster Central--the 301 redirect handles the"www" thing.

Is this correct? I hate to hose things (even worse?)

Help!

Kathleen