Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Google is indexing urls with parameters despite canonical
-
Hello Moz,
Google is indexing lots of urls despite the canonical in my site. Those urls are linked all over the site with parameters like ?, and looks like Google is indexing them despite de canonical. Is Google deciding to index those urls because they are linked all over the site? The canonical tag is well implemented.
-
Hi there,
As has been pointed out, the rel=canonical tag is just a suggestion to Google that you don't want a page to be indexed or to rank. They can choose to ignore the tag if they want to. If you want to keep pages out of the index, there are a few options:
-
The rel=canonical tag as you've tried
-
Adding a noindex tag as pointed out above
-
Use the URL parameters configuration option in Google Webmaster Tools
Give that you've tried the first one, I'd recommend giving the second two options a try and seeing what happens.
I hope that helps!
Paddy
-
-
I believe the problem here is being caused by the fact that you are using relative, rather than absolute URLs for your canonical tag. I've seen this happen before on a site I was working on. Thanks to awesome suggestions from Moz Q & A from community member George Andrews (endorsed by Dr. Pete Meyers), we updated all of our canonical tags to be absolute URLs instead of relative URLs. This completely solved the exact problem you are describing.
Here's a link to that thread: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/community/q/what-is-the-proper-syntax-for-rel-canonical
The best news is, it's a very easy, inexpensive and quick SEO win.
I love those!Dana
-
Thanks for your answerk, but I don't think this can be the solition.
The problem is that Google is indexing urls with parameters, so, I can see in SERPS those urls indexed despite the canonical
But in code you can see:
www.myweb.com/url123?type=3 has the rel="canonical" href="//myweb.com/url123" />
-
Hi,
The rel canonical tag won't prevent pages from being indexed - all it does is act as a way to 'suggest' to Google that there is a preferred page. if you don't want pages indexing, you have to prevent Google from crawling and indexing them (noindex).
-Andy
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
-
Virtual URL Google not indexing?
Dear all, We have two URLs: The main URL which is crawled both by GSC and where Moz assigns our keywords is: https://andipaeditions.com/banksy/ The second one is called a virtual url by our developpers: https://andipaeditions.com/banksy/signedandunsignedprintsforsale/ This is currently not indexed by Google. We have been linking to the second URL and I am unable to see if this is passing juice/anything on to the main one /banksy/ Is it a canonical? The /banksy/ is the one that is being picked up in serps/by Moz and worry that the two similar URLs are splitting the signal. Should I redirect from the second to the first? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | TAT1000 -
Query for paginated URLs - Shopify
Hi there, /collections/living-room-furniture?page=2
On-Page Optimization | | williamhuynh
/collections/living-room-furniture?page=3
/collections/living-room-furniture?page=4 Is that ok to make all the above paginated URLs canonicalised with their main category /collections/living-room-furniture Also, does it needs to be noindex, follow as well? Please advice, thank you!1 -
Canonical: Same content but different countries
I'm building a website that has content made for specific countries. The url format is: MyWebsite.com/<country name="">/</country> Some of the pages for <specific url="">are the same for different countries, the <specific url="">would be the same as well. The only difference would be the <country name="">.</country></specific></specific> How do I deal with canonical issues to avoid Google thinking I'm presenting the same content?
On-Page Optimization | | newbyguy0 -
Canonical tags in the body?
Hi there, Does anyone know if placing canonical tags in the body instead of the header of a page will still "take"? The system we are on means that making an editable header is no easy business and I was just wondering how big of a difference it makes to have it in a different area. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Whittie0 -
Dynamic URL Parameters + Woocommerce create 404 errors
Hi Guys,
On-Page Optimization | | jeeyer
Our latest Moz crawl shows a lot of 404-errors for pages that create dynamical links for users? (I guess it are dynamic links, not sure). Situation: On a page which shows products from brand X users can use the pagination icons on the bottom, or click on: View: / 24/48/All.
When a user clicks 48 the end of the link will be /?show_products=48
I think there were some pages that could show 48 products but do not exist anymore (because products are sold out for example), and that's why they show 404's and Moz reports them. How do I deal with these 404-errors? I can't set a 301-redirect because it depends on how many products are shown (it changes every time).
Should I just ignore these kind of 404-errors? Or what is the best way to handle this situation?0 -
No-index all the posts of a category
Hi everyone! I would like no-indexing all the posts of a specific category of my wordpress site. The problem is that the structure of my URL is composed without /category/: www.site-name.ext/date/post-name/
On-Page Optimization | | salvyy
so without /category-name/ Is possibile to disallow the indexing of all the posts of the category via robots.txt? Using Yoast Plugin I can put the no-index for each post, but I would like to put the no-index (or disallow/) a time for all the post of the category. Thanks in advance for your help and sorry for my english. Mike0 -
How does Google treat Dynamic Titles?
Let's say my website can be accessed in only 3 states Colorado, Arizona and Ohio. I want to display different information to each visitor based on where they are located. For this I would also like the title to change based on their location. Not quite sure how Google we treat the title and rank the site.... Any resources you can provide would be helpful. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
Correct .htaccess settings for canonical url?
I want to forward all urls to http:www.mysite.com but am a little confuse because I am getting duplicate content error: Pages with Duplicate Page Content as of Jan 15http://titanappliancerepair.com/ 1 duplicatehttp://titanappliancerepair.com 1 duplicatehttp://titanappliancerepair.com/index.html 1 duplicate*****************************************************************What should I put ion htaccess file so I can forwardhttp://titanappliancerepair.com/index.htmlhttp://titanappliancerepair.comhttp://titanappliancerepair.com/to http://www.titanappliancerepair.comor what is the correct way to do it?I'm confused because when I enter http://titanappliancerepair.com/ in browser it showshttp://titanappliancerepair.com so how can it be considered duplicate content?.Can someone help?I have godaddy and they have gave me this code to put RewriteEngine on
On-Page Optimization | | webbutler13
rewritecond %{http_host} ^coolexample.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.)$ http://www.coolexample.com/$1 [r=301,nc]What is correct?0