Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 12:30 PM
Carpe diem on any duplicate content worries: we now support a format that allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL. If your site has identical or vastly similar content that's accessible through multiple URLs, this format provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version.Let's take our old example of a site selling Swedish fish. Imagine that your preferred version of the URL and its content looks like this:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish
However, users (and Googlebot) can access Swedish fish through multiple (not as simple) URLs. Even if the key information on these URLs is the same as your preferred version, they may show slight content variations due to things like sort parameters or category navigation:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&category=gummy-candy
Or they have completely identical content, but with different URLs due to things such as a tracking parameters or a session ID:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234&sessionid=5678
Now, you can simply add this <link> tag to specify your preferred version:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish" />
inside the <head> section of the duplicate content URLs:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&category=gummy-candy
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234&sessionid=5678
and Google will understand that the duplicates all refer to the canonical URL: http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish. Additional URL properties, like PageRank and related signals, are transferred as well.
This standard can be adopted by any search engine when crawling and indexing your site.
Of course you may have more questions. Joachim Kupke, an engineer from our Indexing Team, is here to provide us with the answers:
Is rel="canonical" a hint or a directive?
It's a hint that we honor strongly. We'll take your preference into account, in conjunction with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.
Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical, such as <link rel="canonical" href="product.php?item=swedish-fish" />?
Yes, relative paths are recognized as expected with the <link> tag. Also, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL.
Is it okay if the canonical is not an exact duplicate of the content?
We allow slight differences, e.g., in the sort order of a table of products. We also recognize that we may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, so we may occasionally see different versions of your content. All of that is okay with us.
What if the rel="canonical" returns a 404?
We'll continue to index your content and use a heuristic to find a canonical, but we recommend that you specify existent URLs as canonicals.
What if the rel="canonical" hasn't yet been indexed?
Like all public content on the web, we strive to discover and crawl a designated canonical URL quickly. As soon as we index it, we'll immediately reconsider the rel="canonical" hint.
Can rel="canonical" be a redirect?
Yes, you can specify a URL that redirects as a canonical URL. Google will then process the redirect as usual and try to index it.
What if I have contradictory rel="canonical" designations?
Our algorithm is lenient: We can follow canonical chains, but we strongly recommend that you update links to point to a single canonical page to ensure optimal canonicalization results.
Can this link tag be used to suggest a canonical URL on a completely different domain?
**Update on 12/17/2009: The answer is yes! We now support a cross-domain rel="canonical" link element.**
Previous answer below:
No. To migrate to a completely different domain, permanent (301) redirects are more appropriate. Google currently will take canonicalization suggestions into account across subdomains (or within a domain), but not across domains. So site owners can suggest www.example.com vs. example.com vs. help.example.com, but not example.com vs. example-widgets.com.
Sounds great—can I see a live example?
Yes, wikia.com helped us as a trusted tester. For example, you'll notice that the source code on the URL http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nelvana_Limited specifies its rel="canonical" as: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nelvana.
The two URLs are nearly identical to each other, except that Nelvana_Limited, the first URL, contains a brief message near its heading. It's a good example of using this feature. With rel="canonical", properties of the two URLs are consolidated in our index and search results display wikia.com's intended version.
Feel free to ask additional questions in our comments below. And if you're unable to implement a canonical designation link, no worries; we'll still do our best to select a preferred version of your duplicate content URLs, and transfer linking properties, just as we did before.
Updated: This link-tag is currently also supported by Ask.com, Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo!.
267 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 1 – 200 of 267 Newer› Newest»Wanted to let everybody know I've created a WordPress plugin, Magento module and Drupal module for this new feature, to be found here: canonical URL links.
That's great! I've been having problems with duplicate content, struggling, but this solves my problem. Thanks
We are making a change on our site that will move combine content from several different pages all onto one single page. We are planning on 301'ing the pages onto the new, combined page.
I'm wondering if we can just use the canonical tag on the pages that will be combined - the combined content will reproduced exactly as it was on the prior page.
Nice. I really like this.
I think we're going to support this in Spinn3r as well (spinn3r.com)
So this means that two large crawlers now support this spec. (We crawl for dozens of large search startups).
We already support storing redirect URLs. We also find the canonical URL for redirected URLs (feedburner, doubleclick, etc) so this is just one more extension to that standard.
Kevin
you guys did a thing with this one. nice job. this is much preferable to having a huge list of internal 301s. it's not often we get a new tool as useful as this. once again, nice job.
Thanks to Joost de Valk, always answering my questions with the best WP plugins around!
This is a great time saver and prevents ugly "URL re-writes" work around.
What if there is no link to the canonical page in the site itself? In your example, say the swedish-fish is always presented in a category context, i.e. there is no link in the site directly to http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish -- however this URL does render properly. Is it still ok to use it as a canonical, even if no link point to it?
Thanks!
The same real content but a little different design, like "results in LIST type", "results in CATALOG type";
"view large icons"
"view list"
Content is infact the same but we show it different.
Should "canonical" be used in this case?
What about multilingual sites...
http://mydomain.com/en/
http://mydomain.com/es/
http://mydomain.com/fr/
...the same structure with different language content. This is made with an authomatic redirection from "root domain": http://mydomain.com/ to "language domain" by example http://mydomain.com/en/ (through navigator language)
...A canonical tag to: http://mydomain.com/
is needed ?
Will it take care of https issues as well, I hope it will? Just wanted to confirm it. Also will like to know about from when can we expect it workable? (I need to read the whole post tomorrow :), but great work)
What about paging? E.g. if there are paged listings of domain objects (products, job posts, links, search results) categorized objects, tagged objects.
Can I use this to specify the canonical URL as the first page of paged listings?
Will Google assign linking-properties to objects on subsequent pages as if the domain object listing was on the first page of listings?
I am going to test this anyway :)
You should have used the Content-Location header instead, as per:
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html
"14.14 Content-Location"
really userfull for ugly URL re-writes.
I'm puzzled as to why cross-domain canonicalisation suggestions aren't taken into account.
If a third party copies my content it would be bad for them to be able to claim their was the original, but since canonicalisation hints point from copy->original, this wouldn't be possible.
However, if a third party decides to mirror, cache or otherwise copy my content, it would be nice if they could semantically indicate the origin of that content on my site.
Allowing cross-domain canonicalisation hints would seem to be a big win for the semantic web (and hence a big win for Google) without any drawbacks.
Can anyone explain why it's not allowed?
This is great, but how do you logistically implement this when you have 5,000 pages and 5 duplicate versions of each?
The example given is for dynamic xhtml. Presumably the same tag will work for ordinary html so that it can be written without the trailing slash.
Will it work for pagination? For example in an ecommerce store that has 100 products in a category and 10 products per page...can we use this tag to make the first page in the category the preferred URL?
Would it be appropriate to use this tag to set a canonical version where the page text on one version is generated with Javascript, and I'd like to point to the pure HTML canonical version?
From a user's point of view, the pages are an identical duplicate, but not from a search engine spider's (non JS) position.
Does this satisfy the "We allow slight differences" part?
At last! :)
Thanks for the info! Is there an easy way to see if there are duplicates which Google sees on my websites, e.g. http://www.whatsthebigidea.com ?
Thanks!!
Wow, I think you might just be onto something here!
RR
www.anon-tools.us.tc
And I assume it's OK for the canonical page to have a 'link rel="canonical"' pointing to itself?
Attention ALL Googler's. I Love it. This may very well solve one of our largest site problems.
I have a question though. Just like we have a sitemap.xml, why not have a canon.xml that works in the same manner as the "life saver" described in this blog.
Thanks Again, for the team does. It's like an early valentine's present.
Is there a way to utilize this tag to "reveal" tabbed content URLs? I have a page with tabs that while Google will index, the results always point to the main page and not the tab URL. (http://www.site.com/index.html?navID=products)
Hopefully this will work for "comment separate pages".
Sounds great... ( why we had to wait for that so long ? ) but:
the favourite canonical urls can be provided via Sitemap as well. Tthis does not seem to solve the "problem"....
How can the tag help me? Isn't it just another ressource ?
Is the url provided by the tag also processed when link-structure is analysed?
This is great!
However I had a question on having similar site targeted for a particular geography (.us/.in etc.) under the same brand name.
for e.g. would canonical work for
mydomain.com
mydomain.us
mydomain.in
where my main site will always be mydomain.com?
Qualified opinion appreciated.
When might we see this feature in the Google Mini? We don't have problems for our sites in google.com, but our Mini doesn't account for this. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that our URLs are not case sensitive, so this would be great for us.
Someone already mentioned this, but why didn't you use the Content-Location header?
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. This is going to make great strides on the web.
Hi,
What about the case where I have explicit geographic mirrors (closer to the users) with their own subdomains such as mirror-CC.main.dom.ain? Should they point to the 'master' copy as canonical, since I'd like you to point them to the closest copy ideally...
Rgds
Damon
What would be really nice would be for web browsers to use the canonical link when bookmarking a site.
Though I imagine it could be abused by sites that, for whatever reason, want to prevent people from bookmarking individual pages, or want to trick people into bookmarking one page when they think they're bookmarking another.
Does this signaling transference (PR, link popularity, etc) work with 302 Permanent Redirect type behaviors?
If not, it should.
Really great for SEO. Thanks for the post.
Should the title="" attribut be used with this? For example,
< link rel="canonical" href="http://domain.com/page-name" title="page title" />
Will this make it to the Google Search Appliance?
Should we use this technique for paginated pages as well?
I am asking that because paginated pages do not have the same content, but have duplicate meta tags since they do not defer from the main page in any substantial way.
For example when someone is looking for widgets, I have 3 pages. What should the meta tags be of the 2nd and 3rd page since they are just a continuation of the results shown on the first page??
Wow, this is damn convenient!
I have a question similar to Olagato's. I'm getting close to putting up a site that offers multiple translations of the same content. Currently, those are all being served from the same url and the language changed out either by a server session (user initiated action) or the local user's system settings.
Should I be moving those translations out to other urls, and if so, what would happen if some pages defaulted back to English when there was no translation available - would that duplicate content be something I should use a canonical tag for?
Support for this kind of feature is very welcome, thanks Google. That said...
I second MickeyC's comment, HTTP/1.1 already has a provision for exactly this use case.
Accepting convention, we should expect that the following would work equally well:
<META http-equiv="Content-Location" content="http://myexample.com/canonical-url">
Google Webmaster Tools team, can we expect equal treatment of these tags in the future?
Can i place this tag (Rel=Conanical) on
www.example.com/index.php
example.com/index.php
example.com/
to transfer all credits to www.example.com/
Can the canonical link to an page change.
For example the current canonical URL might be:
http://www.example.com/best-movies
Can this change to:
http://www.example.com/best-movies-2009
Will this have an adverse effect?
Thanks.
A couple of points:
1. Re: "This standard can be adopted by any search engine when crawling and indexing your site."
Do you mean Yahoo/Live have implemented this too, or just that they can if they want to"?
2. There's a bug in the HTML for this post. In Opera, from the question "Can I use a relative path..." everything appears in a green monospace font.
i think there is bug in this link bcoz I am not able to post this link on my www.example.blogspot.com.
An error occurs when link Rel=Conanical.... is pasted on my Blogspot (Blogger)
CMS Made Simple (1.5+) already supports this.... just add
<link rel="canonical" href="{$content_obj->GetURL()}"/>
into your page template(s) to reduce or eliminate any of the duplicate content problems caused by people using alternative URLS to access pages.
Thanks guys.... this really solved a problem for a lot of content management systems.
Hi, my question is: I know that using canonicals is rather a hint, but I wonder if it's necessary when having sitemap.xml file, which does more or less the same job. In other words, does the sitemap release me from adding canonical urls in "link" tags?
Hey Joachim and Maile,
I think this is a really great offering but, do have two questions which I hope you'll answer!
I feel like this post could be interpreted as saying that the "preferred URL link tag" (If that is what it's called?) should ONLY be included "inside the HEAD section of the duplicate content URLs" and not inside the HEAD section of the preferred URL itself. Obviously that could prove problematic in terms of implementation... :)
Just to be clear, is it safe to say that there is no problem if the "preferred URL link tag" also appears within its own page's HEAD section? As in, it's fine that link rel="canonical" href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nelvana" appears within the HEAD section of http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nelvana. Is that correct?
By the way, how does Google handle a "preferred URL link tag" containing a relative path when accessible via www and non-www URLs? For example, link rel="canonical" href="product.php?item=swedish-fish" when both http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish and http://example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish exist?
Thanks for your help!
-Brian
*In compliance with Blogger's rules for posting, proper HTML wasn't included above...
There were a lots of methods to get rid of duplicate content, but this is the simplest way.
The page rank juice will go to the canonical link?
Russian lenguage, please )
Hi guys, thanks for reading our post and making time to ask for clarification. :) We've tackled some of your questions below...
@Everyone: Just to clarify, rel="canonical" helps Google select one URL and its contents from duplicates -- it doesn't accumulate the content from duplicates into one URL. If you set the rel="canonical" in URL A and URL B to point to URL C, the contents of URL C won't become "content from A + the content from B + the content from C."
With rel="canonical", we'll likely index the content of C by itself, and then transfer to it the quality signals and linking properties from URL A and URL B.
Hoosier said...
We are making a change on our site that will move combine content from several different pages all onto one single page. We are planning on 301'ing the pages onto the new, combined page.
I'm wondering if we can just use the canonical tag on the pages that will be combined - the combined content will reproduced exactly as it was on the prior page.
@Hoosier: 301s from your old URLs to your new combined content page sounds like the preferred method for your situation. 301 redirects are still of primary importance. rel="canonical" should only be used in areas where the content is identical (or very similar) but it's not possible to eliminate content from being served on multiple URLs.
Yannick said...
What if there is no link to the canonical page in the site itself? In your example, say the swedish-fish is always presented in a category context, i.e. there is no link in the site directly to http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish -- however this URL does render properly. Is it still ok to use it as a canonical, even if no link point to it?
@Yannick: Yes, rel="canonical" can still take effect, even if there are no other links to the preferred version of the URL.
Cahit said...
The same real content but a little different design, like "results in LIST type", "results in CATALOG type";
"view large icons"
"view list"
Content is infact the same but we show it different. Should "canonical" be used in this case?
@Cahit: Yes, if the items in your content page are the same but with different views, such as sort order or listing type, then rel="canonical" can be used.
Olagato said...
What about multilingual sites...
http://mydomain.com/en/
http://mydomain.com/es/
http://mydomain.com/fr/
...the same structure with different language content. This is made with an authomatic redirection from "root domain": http://mydomain.com/ to "language domain" by example http://mydomain.com/en/ (through navigator language)
...A canonical tag to: http://mydomain.com/ is needed ?
@Olagato: Each language should have a separate URL because the content is unique. We’d advise against equating different languages using either 301s or link rel="canonical".
AjiNIMC said...
Will it take care of https issues as well, I hope it will? Just wanted to confirm it. Also will like to know about from when can we expect it workable?
@AjiNIMC: Yes, you can use rel="canonical" for https to http or vice versa. Rel="canonical" is already live in Google's indexing process and has shown results for our trusted testers. After your content containing rel="canonical" information is crawled, the process can take effect for your site.
vizualbod.com said...
What about paging? E.g. if there are paged listings of domain objects (products, job posts, links, search results) categorized objects, tagged objects.
Can I use this to specify the canonical URL as the first page of paged listings?
Will Google assign linking-properties to objects on subsequent pages as if the domain object listing was on the first page of listings?
@vizualbod.com, George: I would not specify the canonical URL as the first page of listings for paginated content. Why not? As mentioned earlier, rel="canonical" does not accumulate text contents from various pages -- so it should only be used in situations where the content is identical or nearly identical. In a paginated series, each page contains entirely different content/items so they shouldn't be grouped as one URL. Thanks for asking, though!
Shaper said...
I'm puzzled as to why cross-domain canonicalisation suggestions aren't taken into account.
If a third party copies my content it would be bad for them to be able to claim their was the original, but since canonicalisation hints point from copy->original, this wouldn't be possible.
However, if a third party decides to mirror, cache or otherwise copy my content, it would be nice if they could semantically indicate the origin of that content on my site.
Allowing cross-domain canonicalisation hints would seem to be a big win for the semantic web (and hence a big win for Google) without any drawbacks.
Can anyone explain why it's not allowed?
@Shaper: In this first announcement of rel="canonical", we wanted to keep things more simple and help webmasters with duplicate content URLs. The feature you're explaining deals slightly more with copyrighting or authorship, which wasn't our primary intention with this release. Given feedback over time, we may reconsider this decision, but I wouldn't count on this anytime in the near future.
Silverstall said...
The example given is for dynamic xhtml. Presumably the same tag will work for ordinary html so that it can be written without the trailing slash.
@Silverstall: properly resolving the trailing slash in your URLs is often more scalably done through your webserver, not at the page level with rel="canonical". Otherwise, if "without the trailing slash" means we can still parse that just fine.
Rob said...
Would it be appropriate to use this tag to set a canonical version where the page text on one version is generated with Javascript, and I'd like to point to the pure HTML canonical version?
From a user's point of view, the pages are an identical duplicate, but not from a search engine spider's (non JS) position.
Does this satisfy the "We allow slight differences" part?
This can be a bit of slippery slope, but yes, if you're pointing to the HTML version of your site versus say, an AJAX version, that's okay.
WhatsTheBigIdea said...
Thanks for the info! Is there an easy way to see if there are duplicates which Google sees on my websites…
@WhatsTheBigIdea: There are ways to understand your potential duplicate issues more easily -- not sure if I'd say there was an "easy way" :)
Background on duplicate content: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359
Feature in Webmaster Tools that informs you of URLs in your site with duplicate titles or meta descriptions:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80407
MickeyC said...
You should have used the Content-Location header instead, as per:
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html
"14.14 Content-Location"
@MickeyC: Yes, from a theoretical standpoint that makes sense and we certainly considered it. A few points, however, led us to choose <link rel="canonical"... />:
1. Our data showed that the "Content-Location" header is configured improperly on many web sites. Sometimes webmasters provide long, ugly URLs that aren’t even duplicates -- it's probably unintentional. They're likely unaware that their webserver is even sending the Content-Location header.
It would've been extremely time consuming to contact site owners to clean up the Content-Location issues throughout the web. We realized that if we started with a clean slate, we could provide the functionality more quickly. With Microsoft and Yahoo! on-board to support this format, webmasters need to only learn one syntax.
2. Often webmasters have difficulty configuring their web server headers, but can more easily change their HTML. rel="canonical" seemed like a friendly attribute.
Damon said...
What about the case where I have explicit geographic mirrors (closer to the users) with their own subdomains such as mirror-CC.main.dom.ain? Should they point to the 'master' copy as canonical, since I'd like you to point them to the closest copy ideally...
@Damon:
If you set the rel="canonical" for your mirrors to be your master URL, then only the master URL is likely to be returned in search results, regardless of the user's location. Redirecting the user to their closest mirror site would need to occur on your webserver after clickthrough.
Wade Leftwich said...
And I assume it's OK for the canonical page to have a 'link rel="canonical"' pointing to itself?
@Wade: Yes, it's absolutely okay to have a self-referential rel="canonical". It won't harm the system and additionally, by including a self-reference you better ensure that your mirrors have a rel=”canonical” to you.
I recently migrated a site to a new domain and all contents appear on 2 differnt domain names, would it do any harm to the old and new sites at the same time? Do I need to insert the new code in all pages in the old site so that Google notices the difference?
Thanks
TG
I see no use of this feature as long as I keep my website clean and smart. Ofcourse, it's very good for complex websites built without Head (from shoulders).
What will this do to search results?
Suppose the URL currently listed by for a page when people search for WIDGETS is http://www.widgets.com
If I specify the canonical URL as http://widgets.com (no www) does the page listing in Google change to http://widgets.com or do I ruin the positioning of the page?
how to apply this to blogspot blogs?
Hi,
1. I think this is a great addition; HTML has been missing a way to declare a canonical for a while...
2. Would the use of rel=canonical be okay in terms of content, and print versions?
The original content would be properly formatted, with divs, and everything. Print alternative is stripped of all headers, and footers, but the main content is there. Is the use of rel=canonical suitable in this case, or should I use something else?
EG: Content Page (Biography) and Print Alternate
Thanks,
Not sure if someone has already asked this but how does Google treat the links pointing to the canonical pages? Would it treat this in a similar way to a 301 redirect and pass all link equity onto the preferred or would these links be lost?
I'm in the process of redirecting a number of duplicate pages so will use this technique if the links are passed on, otherwise i will just stick with the 301 method.
You've said don't use it for pagination where the content is different.
What about with wordpress comment pagination, where the comments are split across several URLs but the post is the same on each. Like this.
Thanks for this great help. However, I have a doubt in my mind, whether this canonical specification will be considered by Yahoo and MSN too??
Looking forward to hear from Google??
Hello Google,
There is certainly a need for clarification to the question asked by vizualbod.com.
What if a site has a main item page, and then uses pagination for comments or reviews.
Here is an example:
productreview.com.au/showitem.php?item_id=1034
Should the pagination pages be pointed to the main product page?
Note that content on all pagination pages changes when new reviews are added (as old reviews move down these pages). So, I think it's nice to be able to use a canonical URL to point everything to the main product page. On sites such as this the main portion of the content on the page is fixed, but reviews/comments section is paginated.
There are many sites using above logic... so please comment.
I wonder if this can be used to simply re-name a url.
From a long CRM string describing swedish fish to simply
/swedish-fish
If so would this help that url with page rank in the future as it is more easily read?
Cheers,
Adam
I really need an answer to this question!!!!
We have an asp site on shared hosting without isapi so we don't have anyway to avoid canonicalisation issues.
Will this tag be an acceptable way to resolve this issue?
So would adding this: link rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com/" (open and close code removed) to index.asp work and cause the accurate re-distribution of PageRank?
wow that was a wonderful explanatory post on the canonical tag. Really helpful!
if google has indexed my non-www version of the site how do i add the code to a page which doesn't actually exist i.e. duplicate content. Do I just add to the www version?
Please inform me about these cases:
-- The difference between http/www.example.com and http://www.store.example.com is in the menu.
-- The difference is that in http://www.store.example.com you have a link bellow each product to order.
-- The difference is that in http://www.store.example.com you have one unique link pointing to an order page.
-- The difference is between menu and link to order in the two URLs.
Can I use this tag in the four cases? Thanks.
You said: "rel="canonical" should only be used in areas where the content is identical (or very similar)". Once the expression "very similar" is subjective may you specify it better?
Its interesting. I am confused that will it take care of rewrite urls?
We had dynamic urls earlier e.g.
www.mywebiste.com/group.php?group_id=620
Now using htaccess it has been changed to urls like: http://www.mywebiste.com/groups/mohit420/johnty-rhodes/620
Google has both indexed both the pages. Can I use canonical for www.mywebiste.com/group.php?group_id=620 so google identify that it is duplicate of new url?
Do Google consider urls with slash "/" or without slash as the same page/content? If no, can I specify one as my prefered?
Ex: site.com/books, site.com/books/
Seems to me that this tag is really only useful to programmers. The general webmaster, say of a blogger site, would not be able to implement this code. Now, if a coder knows enough that duplicate content is an issue, wouldn't they then be savvy enough to build their site in such a fashion as NOT to create duplicate content in the first place? IE, using .htaccess and programmatic URL rewrites. That's what we do with Joomla. I can see some minor uses for this, such as on the search results pages, but I try to have those not indexed at all, ie NoIndex, follow tags, etc.
I notice that my question is excellently rendered useless...
What I mean is:
if I say in the rel=canonical href = "url.php?thingy=1& amp;thingy=2"
The sourcecode will appear WITH the amp; piece of tekst.
Will this work as a valid redirect, or wil it fail?
Can we use this standard to eliminate duplicate content issues if you have 2 URLs point to the exactly same file, for ecample:
www.example.com and www.example.com/index.html are obviously the same file. can we use the the tag here to specify one url over the other?
With the advent of the canonical tag all the worries about duplicate urls vanish in thin air. To denote the web pages as duplicates but also to secure the search engine metrics associated with the URLs the only weapons search marketers had before this invention was 301 redirect.
Now search marketers have a very simple way of labeling duplicate urls and also to pass on the valuable search engine metrics to the preferred URL.
Thank you Google!
for more details
www.divinesaints.com
for more details
www.divinesaints.com
@Maile Ohye: you say "1. Our data showed that the "Content-Location" header is configured improperly on many web sites."
That's unfortunate, but by embracing Content-location you could have driven the industry toward finally starting paying attention to it.
Also, if you would accept an explicit
<meta http-equiv="Content-location" ...> placed in the document, you would still remain closer to an existing standard. A presence of such meta is unlikely to be something inserted automatically by the web server, but rather a deliberate markup by the page author, so I think you could have used <meta http-equiv="Content-location" ...> instead of the newly invented <link rel="canonical" ...>. You could still disregard actual Content-location headers in HTTP messages if you're so inclined because of their low quality...
Hi,
The canonical link tag sounds like a great idea but how do we include them on pages which don't exist?
For example
www.mydomain.com
www.mydomain.com?kbid=8765&sub=676
The bottom url is a link from an email whith tracking code.
Both links get indexed but the link with the tracking code isn't a physical URl so I can't add the Canonical link tag!
Any advise?
I would like to know if this is appropriate in cases where the two different URLs provide access to the same physical resource, but they have different semantics.
An example is described here, where two conceptually different resources have the same representation, e.g. "a report on the current weather in Oaxaca" and "a report on the weather in Oaxaca on 17 February 2009".
In the case I'm working on, we have two URLs that mean "the current version of an article" and "this specific article version", that might serve up the same content. Unlike the weather example, there will be times when two URLs will not change and will serve the same content for long periods (indefinitely).
In this case, it's wrong to say that one of these URLs is "canonical". Yet, we're still worried about the diluting of the page rank. We're currently considering using "Content-Location" but without the "link rel='canonical'", is that the right strategy?
this is great! I will try this on my blogs...
Promotional items
Why could we make stuff like for nofollow ?
I mean < a href=example.com/page" rel="canonical" ?
for more details
www.divinesaints.com
Why would a site I am working on appear as ww.okglawyers.com and not www.okglawyers.com - and will this canonical link be able to fix it? Has anyone seen this before? I can't find help for this anywhere and have checked every setting I know of.
Very interesting... so supposed I had
www.domain.com/default.asp
domain.com/default.asp
domain.com/
and
www.domain.com
All are the same file but seen by Google as different URLs... I would add (field did not accept my < >tags) link rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com" and then I will have only 1 version of my home page indexed.
Will it hurt if http://www.domain.com had the canonical pointing to itself?
link rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com" ???
thank you
Similar to James problem I´d like to know if this tag ensures the indexing of the in the tag mentioned canonical URL?
I´m asking this because our servers inevitably add session-ids to any url. Plus a load balancer redirects to www1 and www2 urls. Can this problem be solved via this new tag by just implementing the canonical-tag to all existing duplicate pages and the page we´d prefer to be indexed?
best regards
Olli
I have a simple question regarding about paging.
My meta tags are being duplicated over these page, should I use the link canonical?
I have one absolutely burning question about this tag:
If I include it on a page which has a meta robots tag of "noindex", and point it to a canonical variant of this page (which can be indexed), does this cause any problems?
Essentially, we use meta robots "noindex, follow" for things like pagination, different sorting order of products, etc etc - this handles the duplicate content issue (and much better than robots.txt, from a site-owner’s perspective).
What I want to make sure is that, if I include this new rel=canonical tag, that search engines that don’t handle this new tag can handle the "noindex" tag to eliminate duplicate content that way and search engines which do use the canonical tag are correctly supported.
This is the single most important thing I need to know about this new tag. Please could you include this in your webmaster guidelines or a follow up blog post?
The second most important thing is - is the behaviour of the above standardised with the other search engines which are using it too?
One thing I'm not clear on:
Because this doesn't actually affect the URL displayed to a user in the browser, which still includes query parameters (of course!) - if a user copies URL from their browser and uses it in a link on their page, is the page rank effect of that link properly attributed to the canonical URL found in the markup of the page being linked to? Or to the actual URL listed, parameters included?
What I'm trying to understand is the extent to which this absolves us of the need to strive for query-parameter free URLs on external links to our site, so that the effect of citations is not split among multiple versions of the same URL.
In short, it's clesr this is a great advance when Google is crawling our sites, but it's less clesr to me if it also solves problems in the citation arena.
Thanks!
Since we have started using this on our site, we created a firefox extension to read the canonical tag value without having to do a view-source.
You can download it from http://www.wahanda.com/inspire/canonical-uri-extension-for-firefox if you think it will be useful
Would it be possible to use this to steer away from the English version of our site?
We have a zencart site www.stanley-livingstone.eu and use the Dutch language on all pages and products. Up to now we do not use the English language on the site.(Might do that later) But zencart generates an English version anyway. This comes up at google search results here and there. But it links to a part of our site that is totally incomplete. So it also gives duplicate content warnings. Same thing with the png pictures. They are so small no sense in showing these. It would be far better if we could redirect those unwanted results to the relevant part of the site with genuine content.
Guys, please help me to promote canonical tag for IPB forum. I want to motivate ipb creators for implementing this simple tag in their CMS, but at the moment they all show me resistance :(
You help needed in replying in this thread:
http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=281532
Thanks!
Hi,
I understand the concept but I don't really get how to use it.
For example, we have the following URLs which show exactly the same content:
http://mysite.com
http://mysite.com/index.htm
http://www.mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com/index.htm
In fact, they actually show the content of index.htm.
So what do I do?
I just add the following line in the <head> section of index.htm?
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com"/>
Another sample is if we have the followings:
http://www.mysite.com/product.htm
http://www.mysite.com/product.htm?category=1
And they all show the content of http://www.mysite.com/product.htm.
What I need to do is to add the following to the <head> section of product.htm?
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com/product.htm"/>
I might misunderstand the concept.
Please help me clarify.
Thanks :)
I have an ecommerce site and believe my home page may have a canonical issue.
www.PopularHomeCollections.com
www.PopularHomeCollections.com/default.aspx
Those two urls have the same exact content.
Which one do I want to tag as canonical? The shorter one which I have been creating links for?
Well what's the purpose behind having the same content on different URLs...why should we use diffrent URLs for the same content...can anyone give me a good example for this.
Thanks,
What happen if im putting the rel=canonical tag at the canonical page?
This is great news, and I think has the potential to do a lot for clarify of information and the pathways to access that information, as well as being a valuable too for search engine optimization in terms of knowledgeable webmasters taking advantage of this behaviour on complex sites. Should ensure, for example, that products get properly indexed and referenced as one thing. Maybe it'll even help the public too! ;)
This sounds great, but has anyone done any testing, yet? I mean, are dup URLs actually being *removed* from indexes by this? How is this going to affect manipulative duplicate content alogos?
Canonicalization issues should be addressed in planning and development and are very easily avoided when you've structured your website appropriately. Keyword research, develop, deploy. I just don't trust this *one* tag (anyone remember metas?) to resolve the issues, entirely; it's up to programmers to program accordingly. Dynamic 404s and strict URL structuring is an extremely effective, preemptive technique that people aren't using as it is. What happens when this tag gets abused or deployed incorrectly?
Will this tag actually have any effect on 'big' sites that *don't* implement this technique?
I need to understand the reward and penalty structure of this tag, in direct reference to white hat, and black hat, policies; and what Search Engines have in mind for this consideration.
This will be interesting to watch unfold over the next several months...
Arow
Similar to the question about the Content-Location header, did you consider the existing value of "alternate" for the "rel" attribute? That value "Designates substitute versions for the document in which the link occurs." Granted, it does not include this specific use case, but instead of setting the value of the "rel" attribute to "canonical", is it acceptable (or practical?) to set "rel" to "alternate canonical"?
I got some question, if i put a canonical link on a page, will the crawler index also any sub category under that page?
sample -> http://www.internetbuyerdirect.co.uk/promotional-awards-c-366.html
Hi,
Is there a way to specify canonical at the domain level instead of page level, e.g. an IDN domain = another regular domain?
My site is at http://บอล.th (or xn--r3cwx.th in punny code). However, IE6 doesn't work well with IDN domains, so the site is also accessible at http://ball.in.th . I've heard that that this is bad because both sites will be considered as duplicates.
301 redirect one site to the other is not desirable because บอล.th doesn't work well with IE6 and ball.in.th is not as meaningful nor localized.
So, it would be wonderful if there is a way to tell that one IDN domain is the same as another regular domain.
will this work for sites that have pages such as default.asp and Default.asp?
Nice bit of information. :-)
This really helps...
Here is a question that I cant seem to answer:
We host our e commerce site on a hosted platform (monstercommerce - networksolutions now)
with their setup, we could get indexed with 4 variations, but 2 are not on the domain.
they have a third level domain that is an exact mirror of our page.
for example:
oursite.com
is also
abc123.netsolstores.com
AND-
Google has us indexed in some cases under the abc123 version.
being that they are exactly the same thing, would using canonical URL links work to identify what the desired page URL is??
thanks
Its wonderful , really nice information
Shawn, I think this is not a case of canonization because the domains are different. Probably you need a 301.
nice article thanks
Pardon the self promotion, but I see comments of people not managing to add the canonical URL on their Blogspot blog.
Here's how I just did it:
(It worked for me, should work for you, tho' I can't be sure.)
I was disatisfy with the google search. Information is wrong, you searching original domain and it show you all junk and artickles except Original domain, website. How come? More over your page appear on place 10 and after suddenly moving to 55? I think problem inside that Google what you pay PPC, here is the primary reason. Yahoo and MSN become much better search today. Google Everyone will tell Thanks if at lease you can simple the search 'word' of original domain name. How is simple to do this!
Very good addition to the SEO world. I have been bothering by the duplicated contents on my site (www.inkjetoffice.com) for a long time due to the nature of my business(e.g: most of the pages have the same contents even it's different products for a given printer type). I'll definitely give it a try to see if my Google rank coming back or not. Thanks for all info and discussions here.
great idea
hope this solve my problems
www.mysite.com/item.asp?itemid=11234&brand=22
www.mysite.com/item.asp?itemid=11234&category=11
www.mysite.com/item.asp?itemid=11234&style=33
they all point to same page www.mysite.com/item.asp?itemid=11234 it only adds the breadcrumbs to the page it cames from.
should i add a canonical element
link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com/item.asp?itemid=11234"
that has no other link on my site and is not indexed by any search engine and has no pagerank
or should i add a canonical element on all above pages to one of the above links for example
link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com/item.asp?itemid=11234&category=11"
which has links to on my site and has been indexed?
All my incoming links are 'called' "not found" because Google ASSUMES index.html.
I have the same problem. All incoming links are for
http://www.mydomain.com/
and google says all these incoming links are missing as it forces /index.html
to be assumed when it does not exist, and is not in any incoming links.
How do I tell google to just accept http://www.mysite.com/
or without the trailing slash to be valid?
Pages DO come up exactly as specified internally and externally
unless you add the unused/unauthorized "index.html" at the end.
Is there any way to get Google to try the base URL and NOT assume/require index.html?
I do not why it is a new version of the plugin. An error on our site Скачать фильмы за смс
You still answering questions? Here's a fun one - I have a site that has a canonical URL that for users 301s to a URL w/ CGI arguments (e.g. /gs=12345). The argument changes everytime the URL resolves. We put the canonical tag on these /gs= urls and specified / as the canonical. Now we have the equivalent of a 301 loop.
1. Is this a problem?
2. If so how do we solve it while still providing the user experience we want?
Hi,
can I use the canonical in these two cases?
1. I have a page that looks like this:
www.mysite.com/pag.php?productid=15
The product featuring on that page is "cottage houses"
Question : can I use this in the head section of that page
link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com/product.php?type=cottage-house&productid=15" /
Will google accept that and not penalize?
2. I have a this page:
http://www.mysite.com/product.php?productid=15&language=UK
Can I suggest a canonical link that looks like this
http://www.mysite.com/cottage-house
and do the same for the spanish page
http://www.mysite.com/product.php?productid=15&language=ESP
by suggesting a canonical that looks like this :
http://www.mysite.com/casa-a-la-campana
Thanks for your reply
This will definitely be welcomed across the WordPress and Blogger communities where duplicate content is a very common problem.
What a wonderful addition thanx for solves my problems. Thanks a lot for this gr8 help.:)
i put this kind of code at last end
.example"/>
do you think the .example"/> (without space) is still consider by google?
Can a page link to multiple canonical URLs? For example, I have a webcomic which offers daily, monthly, and weekly views, and Google seems to prefer the monthly and weekly views over the daily pages (probably because there's more content on them), but I'd rather prefer the daily pages. However, since the weekly/monthly views are aggregations of multiple daily pages, there isn't a single canonical URL for all of them.
In the "swedish fish" example, your canonical views are all for mapping slightly-different single-item displays to the canonical single-item display, but nothing about, say, a listing page with multiple items' details which you'd still want the search engine to only go to a single item in the end.
Haven't seen any answers to the questions about multiple domains, with very similar content.
I have two sites:
http://mydomain.com
http://mydomain.ca
mydomain.ca is 99% the same as mydomain.com, and gets less traffic (but the remaining 1% difference is important to us). I'd like Google, however, to consider most mydomain.ca pages as mydomain.com pages. What should I do?
from few days i'm trying to redirect my domain onlinecasinoselite.com to http://www.onlinecasinoselite.com (non www to www redirect) with a 301 permanent code in the web.config file, but the server make infinite redirect loops, the server is hosted so i can't manage its settings ..i can only upload and operate on the web.config file.. can't really find a solution for this.
thank you for the information! i just updated my blog with your directions from the article!
Google rules! Great job guys!
Would google treat variable incoming links as "link love" or would they only validate your preferred version as valid/weighted.
Per chi ha un blog in wordpress potrebbe interessargli il mio aritcolo:
http://www.blogrulez.com/plugin-wordpress/ottimizzare-i-link-per-google-i-canonical-urls
Where Sample Page has the top of the page duplicated with page A and the bottom half is duplicated with page B, can Sample Page be the canonical version of content for Page A and Page B where A != B?
Any thoughts around how this will work when the rel = canonical URL link is the only link / reference to a unique URL?
What will happen to "orphaned" rel = canonical pages?
Will they rank or will they need to be one of the alterative pages that already exist?
Hello,
I inserted this canonical link in my website for more than a week and I still se the message "Duplicate content" in google Webmaster acccount for this particular problmes.
I started using utm parameters and now I have duplicate problems.
How long should I wait?
How does google handle the case where a page has a canonical tag with a url pointing to itself ?
I would presume that the canonical tag is ignored right ?
I’m working on a complete redesign of an OLD frame-based site with really BAD html file names that do nothing for their SEO. The new site will be based on a template instead. Can I use the canonical link to redirect old page names in the frame-based site to the new page names in my template-based site? The basic content of the pages will be very similar, but lacking all the frames and javascript navigation from the old pages, and thus NOT that similar. Several hundred pages are indexed by google in the old site, many of them not linked with their appropriate navigation frames currently. I don't want to lose the fact that all those pages are indexed but I don't want to keep the old file names either. EG. bb.html is a page about broadbandcapacitors.html
Hi,
I have one serious issue with Canonical. My developer placed a wrong canonical. The page where he placed a rel canonical is 100% different. Google already cached the page and now its point to another page. I removed canonical from that page and update my sitemap.xml file before a week but still Google showing my canonical page as a cached page. How much time Google crawler will take to cache such page.
I hope you understand my question. If not please let me know.
Thanks for any help in advance.
Thanks for the info! i want to ask if duplicate content to our blogs its can decrease your page rank , e.g. my sites http://www.arfree.com and http://www.hotmoneyfast.com the page rank is 3 and get to 0 in 4 day because duplicate content?
Does adding the canonical link tag to a page have the same basic end result (preventing duplicate indexing) as using mod_rewrite and the .htaccess file to "force" a non-www url to do a 301 redirect to the full url (one that contains www)? I have no access to the server/OpenCMS environment we're running on and am desperately looking for some way to achieve this effect (so that "domain.com" and "www.domain.com/index.html" and "domain.com/index.html" all resolve to "www.domain.com").
I have inherited the SEO on two sites- An old one that has a .ltd.uk extension, and a new one that has a .co.uk extension- The content on them is identical- Can I use this feature to tell Googlebot to look at the new site when an identical page is called at the old site?
Tom, you must do as follow in .htaccess file.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www\.domain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]
RewriteRule ^index.html / [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^index.htm$ /initial.html
The index.html is your home page.
The index.htm is a blank page; nothing into it, not even a word.
The initial.html (or other name you want to this file) is a copy of all source-code you have in index.html.
For more information send an email to contato-oti@otimizacao-sites-busca.com
Shoud the canonical urls be url escaped?
When we first started our site we used a basic name sequence from our html pages (Example www.sample-url.com/forest-park-cemetery.htm)
But as we grew we ran into issues with the same cemetery name in the same city so basing our urls on this method would not work so we switched to (Example www.sample-url.com/forest-park-cemetery-morgan-ville-nj.htm)
This created duplicate content issues on about 50 of the 300 pages we had. I looked in to 301 redirects using the htacess page but I’m on a windows server so that was not an option for me.
So when I found this solution I was quite thrilled about it. I went ahead and made the modifications to my content and pages stated dropping from google’s index is this normal and if so what type of time frame can I expect to see it start to reappear in the search results?
I did a site search (site:www.your-url.com) and most of the pages I had added the link to have dropped from the index so I think what its doing is removing the page with the tag and adding or redirecting to the correct page. Does any one have any experience with this or having similar results when using this tag?
Shawn
I'm creating a website that will have several pages with a lot of text.
Instead of listing all the text on each topic up front, I'd like to have a url that features an introduction to the content with a link to another url that will have the intro text plus the rest of the content on that topic.
In other words, the introduction text will be the same on both pages, but the pages will only be identical in that they share the intro text in common. One page will have much more content.
I would not want to get back links to both pages as they are both about the same topic...one page is just more detailed.
Are canonical links a solution to this problem? Is there an issue in that the amount of text on each would vary a great deal?
Would a 301 be more appropriate? Any suggestions?
i still couldnt understand the purpose of this tag can anyone please explain it more clearly so i can understand. What i understand from this article is that we can place this tag to tell the bot that this is our original content but how to implement and where...?
I was interested to read "Google currently will take canonicalization suggestions into account across subdomains (or within a domain), but not across domains."
Does this also apply to stable URLs such as DOIs (http://www.doi.org/) and handles (http://www.handle.net/)? Would it be possible to set a handle as the canonical link even though it is from a different domain?
We are excited to find out about canonical tags. I am ready to implement it. Before we do that, I would like to get something clarified:
Six months ago we implemented URL rewrite to improve SEO. We are using Endeca behind the scene and everything is driven by N parameter.
For example for url "http://www.interstatebatteries.com/cs_estore/Results.aspx/Cell%20Phone?dsNavigation=N~24", the canonical will be "http://www.interstatebatteries.com/cs_estore/Results.aspx?dsNavigation=N~24"
Example 2:
http://www.interstatebatteries.com/cs_estore/Search.aspx/Cellular-Phone/Apple/616-0290?dsNavigation=N~24-4294939843-4285719645
http://www.interstatebatteries.com/cs_estore?dsNavigation=N~24-4294939843-4285719645
Question: Is our page ranking going to drop, indexing, etc since canonical is pointing to a less prettier url (different url)?
Rafique Ali
rafique.ali@ibsa.com
How about filter options in a page with database results? For example, a list of open job offers might be displayed on the start URL, and the user is able to further narrow the results using various links on that page: "Only full-time jobs", "Only part-time jobs" or "Only approved job offers" etc. pp.
These links modify the content such, that some of the results are omitted. If the job list is long enough that it needs pagination, the filtered list is likely to have less pages, so that entries move between pages.
It had already been said, that it is not good to use Canonical URLs for paginated results, as there are different contents on different pages. So it makes sense to use the page number in the Canonical URL.
But how about this case here, where we have PAGING and FILTERING? The filtering produces a lot of near duplicates, because it is the same list, just with certain results omitted.
Of course, one solution is to use rel=nofollow on the filter links, to avoid them being indexed. We do this already, but it does not help against incoming links.
Therefore, would it be ok, that a result page with non-standard filter settings has a similiar result page with standard filter settings as its canonical page?
I have just one homepage and I am using HBX tracking codes to track the traffic source. Since the article asks to add the canonical tag to the homepage versions, I do not have a separate homepage. All the tracking urls point to the same homepage. So where can I add the canonical tag?
Thanks!
We're serving duplicate PDF's. For that application Content-Location would have a distinct advantage, in that it is easy to supply HTTP Headers with such a download, but we have no place to put a <link> tag. How would Google/Microsoft/Yahoo prefer that we mark our duplicate binary downloads?
Thanks for all the information about Canonicals. Now, as a holder of a Masters degree in Communications/Journalism, I would like to share some punctuation and grammar tips with webmasters everywhere.
1. When ending a sentence with quotation marks, the accepted style is to put the period INSIDE the quotations as in this example.
Joe was accomplished at website building, but not at the stylistic "niceties."
The reason for this convention is that punctuation is intended to provide an indication of what facial expressions and tone of voice normally do FOR VERBAL COMMUNICATIONS. In this context, quotes are intended to "emphasize" a word or phrase. The period indicates the end of a group of words, not the end of a set of punctuation marks, hence putting the period outside the quotation marks is an incorrect use of that type of punctuation.
2. Writing and writing well are two different things. The perception that "anyone can write" is completely incorrect. This idea is largely born out of a sense that simply being able to speak conveys the ability to write. The reality is that these are two different sets of skills. Speaking involves the ability to think quickly, having a sufficiently expressive face to convey concepts beyond the words being used and a large enough vocabulary to express complex ideas with some shading of meaning. By contrast, writing uses punctuation, word choice and other tools to convey things as though they were being spoken to the intended audience.
Today's internet is a veritable warehouse of every possible error that can be made with the written language. For those of us who have spent decades learning to express ourselves with the written word, it is an affront. We realize that most people today have so little knowledge of good grammar, spelling and punctuation that they cannot distinguish between the "well written" and the "poorly written" prose on the web.
I am not saying that this site is poorly written. Aside from the errors on the punctuation, it is actually not bad. However, because this site is going to get visited by many people, the punctuation errors need to be corrected.
It is too bad that computers don't flag such errors as they flag HTML errors. Perhaps, if they did, grammar, punctuation and spelling would improve. Excuse my having barged into your activity, but I sincerely wanted to improve the site.
PS: I make such errors, too. This is why I have people review my copy. It is too difficult to do everything by one's self. If you would like more comments on every day faux pas on the net, feel free to contact madame_karnak@yahoo.com
What happens if the canonical tag is put on the preferred page? My pages are generated dynamically and the canonical tag shows on the preffered pages and the duplicate pages. However the tag always points to the correct url.
I have some pages with different links for the same content to overcome problems with users that don't use javascript. Example;
http://www.purplecoffee.co.uk/work/aquitaine
http://www.purplecoffee.co.uk/work/aquitaine:img1:prj1
Both the above URL's are the same page.
I'm going to add the canonical link tag witht eh following URI;
/work/aquitaine
Does it matter if this is added to the first URL (the chosen page)?
So if one site is a WP blog and the other site is a blogger blog I can use the WP plugin for the WP blog and the code post in the article for the blogger blog.
Sounds good
thanks
My website has 3 versions of each page. One in $USD, one in $AUD and one in $NZD.
They are referenced by adding a extra dash to the overseas currencies
page = NZ
-page = US
page- = AUS
Is there anyway of making the main canonical page vary depending on the currency and search engine being targeted?
Is there anyway of saying I want all the page = .co.nz in New Zealand Search Engine.
US - in international and
aus in .com.au Australian search engines?
Hi, the label
< link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item1=item1&item2=item2" />
works like
< link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item1=item1& amp;item2=item2" />
ie, search engines interpret it the same?
I have a question. If there are two domains say www.xyz.com and www.xyz.co.uk with same design and content. While the former is for global target audience, latter is for UK target.
Is it possible to use canonical tag below the head if we focus on corporate global site - www.xyz.com?
Kindly suggest at the earliest.
Same canonical tag was updated by mistake in all the site pages instead of just the relevant page.
After the canonical tag has been removed from the irrelevant pages, i see in the new cashed version of those pages that they are still showing the cashed version of the link that was in the canonical tag (Although the date of the cashing is few days after the pages have already been updated). I expected Google to be updated according to the new code in those pages (without the canonical link). How long it may take for Google to consider the update in those pages?
Nice article, so useful, Thanks anyway!
Imagine a site which displays item descriptions. New items are added to the site on a regular basis. The items can be accessed either by id or by index:
www.example.com/item?id=someid
www.example.com/item?index=22
In this example, "accessing by index" means "accessing by date". The item with 0 will always be the youngest item; getting older with increasing indices.
Naturally the URL with the id should be a canonical URL.
Question:
Is it harmful, if the canonical URL of a given URL changes frequently?
Example:
The URL www.example.com/item?index=0 has the canonical URL www.example.com/item?id=someid; a couple of hours later, the same URL www.example.com/item?index=0 has another canonical URL www.example.com/item?id=someotherid, because the item on the first index has changed.
Is this harmful?
Nice one, i installed it on my website http://inplaywepro.com
Check it out guys =)
I had duplicate content probs before...
Although that mod takes you some time, its worth it!
The canonical tag is a great thing. I recently "canonicalized" all content on our website. But I made a terrible mistake that makes all links on the landing pages lead into a nonexistent directory (404 error).
I now corrected this error, but Google Search still leads users to the wrongly canonicalized version of the page.
Does Google reindex the canonical after a while (how long?) or will I have to live with that forever now?
@lucolg
Usually that will clear up as we recrawl your site. You could help by submitting a Sitemap file, but perhaps you're already doing that.
Nice one, I've my website http://www.clicknepal.com
Check it out guys =)
I might have duplicate content from another source. please check.
Can this be used to set canonical for domain aliases such as abc.com and abc.co.uk ? Anyone with the answer?
what to do for old content?
Suppose I have written a new content for an old content.
If I have a very old content and I want to leave it for user for historical reason then what to do?
Example is this page:
Old:
http://www.satya-weblog.com/2007/03/passing-value-javascript-php-javascript.html
New:
http://www.satya-weblog.com/2008/05/passing-value-from-php-html-javascript.html
What should I do?
I think for some of the duplicate or google has stopped sending much traffic to it.
This is really good news from Google as content duplication has always been a gray area for SEOs and developers. At least now we have some control or at least we can express our preferences. We've started using that in our Brighton seo and web design website at http://www.osbornebrook.co.uk so feel free to have a look at the source code to see how it works.
I love Joost's plugins,Its going into my wordpress ASAP, but I also have my own quesion. . I have some other sites though with a few strangler links pointing to my non canonical domain. Once i set up the designated canonical domain the link juice should transfer?
aka will links now pointing to http://archercom.com
redirect their link juice to canonical url www.archercom.com.
I was wondering what the difference is between the canonical tag and 301 redirects. If you use both on the same page is it harmful?
Our firm provides web development services and I want to make sure we're doing this the proper way. Thanks!
I have a series of pages providing short biographies and I need a URL that contains the accents on the names and one that doesn't. For example, /drivers/Alfredo_Pian as well as /drivers/Alfredo_Piàn. Content is identical except for the accent. I plan to mark the latter as canonical but I need the former as almost nobody is aware of the accent and most searches are for the name without the accent.
Is this the correct way to address this issue?
This one is very helpful for me...
Does this mean there is now no need to "No index" duplicate content?
One thing I was wondering, and forgive my ignorance here as I might just be having a spectacularly stupid moment, just say you were controlling duplicate content another way by placing the following code on an index page to re-direct to www.mysite.com:
meta http-equiv="refresh" content=0;url=http://www.mysite.com" /
Whilst search engines treat this in the same manner as a 301 re-direct, if you also placed a No Index directive on this page would it affect the .com being indexed as essentially www.mysite.com and mysite.com/index.html are the same?
This is great as our products are displayed on many URL and now we can control the duplicate results through canonical.
Does this idea extend to Google Analytics? i.e. using the Analytics Data Export API, can I access report data using the canonical url?
It looks it is generating 404 pages. I have tried it using without httpL// in canonoical URL as used in Google trend but it's showing me such 404 pages:
http://www.example.com/Main/www.example.com/Main/
http://www.example.com/Main/ABC/www.example.com/Main/ABC/
Please let me know how I can solve this problem. Even I have done a complete post on this in my blog: http://semflicks.blogspot.com/.
Pls suggest. Thanks
I cant sepcify the correct concial URL's in my sitemap due to the limitations of the ecommerse platform of my store will this have negatve effect to the indexing of my store if i submit the sitemap
hi ..
i wanted to know .. whether can we look for pages with a particular page rank ...
for eg.
i want google to display pages only with PR-2, so is there an option i can use for my search ??
Does this support '& amp;' and not ust '&' to ensure XHTML standards can be maintained?
The Canonical Web Part for Kentico CMS available in here:
http://devnet.kentico.com/Marketplace/Web-parts/-Canonical-link--web-part.aspx
If you use Google Analytics campaign tagging ("utm_source", etc.) - shouldn't Googlebot canonicalize those tags out (they're both Google solutions/recommendations) without you specifically needing to?
It appears Googlebot is treating Analytics-tagged pages as separate pages, unfortunately.
What about in the case where the web backend is passing sessions via a variable in the URL and it changes with each session so you get a different URL with each session. In this case there is no original URL.
Sample:
http://www.domain.com/?category=64&session=12676267223022a080212fecf0c7c5b7
And I want the canonical to be http://www.domain.com/?category=64
Is that going to work?
Below is the code that I did up to take an URL like...
http://www.remnantbooks.org/?page=shop/browse&category_id=64&CLSN_3022=126813742730224acb2195983fafc061
and add the following link canonical tag in the header of the page...
^link rel="canonical" href="http://www.remnantbooks.org/?page=shop/browse&category_id=64" />
^?php $base = "http://www.remenantbooks.org";
$slug = explode("CLSN_3022", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); $slug = $slug[0]; $slug = substr($slug,0,strlen($slug)-1);?>
^link rel="canonical" href="^?php echo "$base"."$slug"; ?>" />
Will this work seeing how there is no page with the following URL?
http://www.remnantbooks.org/?page=shop/browse&category_id=64
*Note: In the above code I change 3 "<" out with "^".
Hi there,
We have a lot of country websites .com, .co.uk, .ie, .com.au etc and for the english speaking sites the all of the content about the products is identical. Each site has its own country flavour, but I would say approx 70-80% of the content (which is just the product info) is identical.
How do we not get penalised by Google for having similar content, but still keep the rankings of each of the country sites?
In one word WOW!! This I was looking for. I ask more than once on Linkedin and Google Forum, but today somebody from the Linkedin Group
Google Zoekmachine Professionals Nederland
send me this link!
Thanks for this wonderfull information.
Marco P.
http://mkbrecruitment.blogspot.com/
Hello,
Can we put more than one canonical tag on a page ?
Exactly i want to do is to emphasize the "Home page" on every page of my website. Along with this i want to emphasize the each page itself.
e.g, for a page pag1.html i want to put the following canonical tags:
link rel="canonical" href="http://www.xyz.com/page1.html"
link rel="canonical" href="http://www.xyz.com/page1.html"
Will it be correct ??
I have added canonical tags without closing link tag. The tag looks like:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.mysite.com">
In all documentation I have came across so far, it looks like only XHTML syntax is supported. Can someone please confirm if HTML syntax without closing tag would work.
Thanks in advance.
The enterprise CMS TYPO3 doesn't need a plugin. I wrote one anyway for the sake of easy living ;-)
I love canonical links! Well done Google!
Read more here: http://henjohoeksma.nl/blog/artikel/typo3-en-canonical-links.html (dutch, but translation will follow)
Or download it here: http://typo3.org/extensions/repository/view/hhcanonical/current/
i got good information about dublicate page error.
thanks
We have an eCommerce Web site with hundreds of products. The structure of our product URLs are dynamic, however those links have been converted into static URLs for bots. We also have 302 redirects in place for all of these pages. I believe that we should have 301 redirects in place as to avoid duplicate content issues. Is this the proper thing to do?
Okay, we think we've got this sorted on our website now. Hopefully it will enable Google to index the pages properly, as we found that Google was indexing weird url extensions to our pages.
Hi there,
Let's say i have a site example.com with a portal on which 3 language links:
example.com/?language=nl
example.com/?language=fr
example.com/?language=en
For the dutch google, i want to have example.nl indexed.
For the french google, i want to have example.fr indexed.
Do I have to place a canonical link on example.com/?language=fr referring to example.fr/?language=fr
and example.com/?language=en referring to example.nl/?language=nl
And a canonical link on example.nl/?language=en referring to example.com/?language=en and so on?
considering that search engines see www. site. com
site. com and
site. com/index. html as three separate pages, can I put in the canonical link to to specify the www page for ranking?
(I put the spaces in so that blogger would accept them not as code...)
Wordpress is also using it for multipaged posts and multipaged comments.
And I'm gonna develop a plugin that uses it for alternative domains for the same content: http://wordpress.hikari.ws/
we are sometimes requested by other blog admins to post a popular article in large community blogs so that many other readers can find it. what to do in that case? a link back to original article is OK but what about identifying that original content?
Our implementation is similar to Deepak Gupta and the link tag is not closed. Could someone please clarify whether this will work or not?
Thanks.
Does Google utm tags create duplicate content issues? I am using the tag for internal tracking and a bit concerned. I don't see these pages indexed, so I am guessing the SEs are aware of this variable and will not crawl these pages. Thanks!
What is the best way to handle canonicalization for a blog site that lists recent blogs on the home page but duplicates the same content on pages for the individual posts? For http://blogstalk.com, I am specifying canonical links for individual blog posts, but no canonical links are used at all on the home page. Is this the best way to do it?
Thank you for clarifying the 301 redirect. I have a question for you. Google indexed my site as www.example.com/index.php. I have all my backlinks pointing to http://www.example.com. Should I do a 301 redirect of http://www.example.com to the google indexed page? It seems that google will determine my rankings based on www.example.com/index.php and unfortunately that version of my domain name is not optimized at all. Or would it be better to have that version removed from the index all together? Thanks in advance
its making a change on our site that will move combine content from several different pages all onto one single page. We are planning on 301'ing the pages onto the new, combined page.
its making a change on our site that will move combine content from several different pages all onto one single page. We are planning on 301'ing the pages onto the new, combined page.
Hiya,
Quite an important aspect has been missing, or not explained.
We have only 2 pages with duplicate content.
"homepage.co.uk" && "homepage.co.uk/community"
and we obviously want to suggest --> "homepage" as the main url.
canonical code:
"href="http://www.HomePage.co.uk/" rel="canonical"
Currently in '/community'
Question:
Do we need to place this for HomePage as well ?
OR
will it be fine just for "/community"
Regards,
Dino
Hello, I want to know that How much priority google gives to URL of the website.
Is google gives different priority to .com, .net, .biz ,.edu, .gov websites?
Is google gives less priority to site which have sub domain ?
If I have set a preferred domain with Google Webmaster as the canonical version of http:// but my Google Analytics Account was initially set up as the www. version must I do something to my Analytics account to take this change into consideration or will my reports continue to be accurate. My web developer does have a 301 direct in place.
i need to know about canonical url with dynamic id's like ../forums/showthread.php?t=23 in link tag
Can i use the following code
<link rel="canonical" href="/" />
on these url's
- www.foo.nl/
- www.foo.nl/default.aspx
- www.foo.nl/idfromhomepage/
Is that allowed
The canonical tag is the best thing I've seen since I started in web design and SEO - and its adoption by all the big players is a huge bonus.
The key things (regardless of site size) are linking!
Be clean - Be structured:
Don't link internally to 404 (missing) pages, don't link internally to 301's (ever) or 302's (if possible), don't link to pages that canonical, and finally be careful what instructions you serve the robots... the rest is down to content, linking, conversion and design.
I'd be keen to see the index reflect changes faster and Webmaster Tools to report pages that canonical into the same singular URL, just as the 404 pages are reported.
Nice thing to implement
Is there a way to use the conical tag where there is a "single page" that has "multiple tracking url's" pointing to it.
E.G various urls pointing to a single page may look like this
www.domain.com.au/page.html?kcbi=this+is+me+tracking
Pointing to
www.domain.com.au/page.html
Also domain.com v domain.com/index.html
So all of the page credability is passed to the one url.
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