Canonical URL & sitemap URL mismatch

[tomcraig86]

Hi

We're running a Magento store which doesn't have too much stock rotation. We've implemented a plugin that will allow us to give products custom canonical URLs (basically including the category slug, which is not possible through vanilla Magento).

The sitemap feature doesn't pick up on these URLs, so we're submitting URLs to Google that are available and will serve content, but actually point to a longer URL via a canonical meta tag.

• The content is available at each URL and is near identical (all apart from the breadcrumbs)
• All instances of the page point to the same canonical URL
• We are using the longer URL in our internal architecture/link building to show this preference

My questions are;

• Will this harm our visibility?
• Aside from editing the sitemap, are there any other signals we could give Google?

Thanks

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

It sounds like the setup should do what you want and not hurt visibility as such. It would be worth checking google webmaster tools for indexed pages to verify that the canonical urls are the ones that are indexed and there is not a large difference between total products/pages on the site and what google has in the index - which might indicate an issue.

If the product range does not change much then it would be worth editing the sitemap to show the canonical urls. Having non canonical urls in the sitemap isn't ideal since it ads an extra step between the urls you are declaring and the urls you want in the index. That being said I have seen magento installs with similar issues with the sitemap urls and have not noted any major problems.