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 Ignoring Canonical Tag for Hundreds of Sites
-
Bazaar Voice provides a pretty easy-to-use product review solution for websites (especially sites on Magento): https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/bazaarvoice-conversations-1.html
If your product has over a certain number of reviews/questions, the plugin cuts off the number of reviews/questions that appear on the page.
To see the reviews/questions that are cut off, you have to click the plugin's next or back function. The next/back buttons' URLs have a parameter of "bvstate....."
I have noticed Google is indexing this "bvstate..." URL for hundreds of sites, even with the proper rel canonical tag in place.
Here is an example with Microsoft:
My website is seeing hundreds of these "bvstate" urls being indexed even though we have a proper rel canonical tag in place. It seems that Google is ignoring the canonical tag. In Webmaster Console, the main source of my duplicate titles/metas in the HTML improvements section is the "bvstate" URLs.
I don't necessarily want to block "bvstate" in the robots.txt as it will prohibit Google from seeing the reviews that were cutoff. Same response for prohibiting Google from crawling "bvstate" in Paramters section of Webmaster Console.
Should I just keep my fingers crossed that Google honors the rel canonical tag?
Home Depot is another site that has this same issue:
-
I have had something similar, this is response I received:
You don’t have canonical tags on the URL and that’s expected.
On pages where BVSEO is implemented, canonical tags must be updated or removed when the product contains more than one page (more than eight) of reviews. BVSEO paginates the product page so all reviews are in the search engines’ index. Canonical tags that point away from a pagination URL will cause search engines to ignore the paginated content.
When any of the BVSEO pagination parameters are present (bvstate, bvrrp, bvqap, bvsyp, bvpage), do one of the following:
•Remove the canonical tag. This is the most common, recommended solution.
•Append the "name=value" pair to the canonical URL.
-
I think I found out what is going on.
I have found that the source code does contain the proper rel canonical tag.
However, the "bazaar voice" plugin generates a code snippet that appears in the page's body where it features a [base_url]. The [base_url] should match up with the canonical tag. For some reason, it isn't. The [base_url] that is generated contains the "bvstate" parameter.
Tools like the Mozbar, and I believe even Googlebot, are extracting out overriding the rel canonical tag with the [base_url] that appears in the code.
Complex!
-
Yeah, it's very strange... if you view-source on the BVSTATE url that is cached, the proper canonical tag is in there. Don't know why toolbar apps like Mozbar show otherwise. I think you're right, must be a deeper issue.
-
I just ran this query for bvstate URLs indexed for the H&R Block site. Mozbar shows canonical tags with bvstate in them, and Screaming Frog finds no canonical tags at all. There is a deeper issue that is not simply Google ignoring them.
-
Hey Logan -
The Microsoft canonical is not being obeyed. The canonical tag points to the one representative URL for the product whereas the "bvstate" URL is shown as being cached.
If you do a search in Google for inurl:"bvstate" , you will see hundreds of sites like H&R Block, Kohls, etc.
-
Do you have different examples? The Home Depot link doesn't work when trying to view the actual page on the site. With the Microsoft link, the canonical is working, as the version with the parameter is not indexed in Google, but the canonical version is indexed, which is what I would expect for a canonical that is being obeyed.
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
-
Google Adding Wrong Location to Title Tag on Multi-Branch Business Homepage
We're a business with 5 separate locations across 5 cities in Upstate NY. While doing some visual ad previews in the adwords interface I noticed that Google is altering my title tag and adding the word "Rochester" to the end of it, cutting short my designated title tag. Rochester is the location of our headquarters so not a big deal for 1/5th of our customers. But to my dismay, the same thing is happening when searching from the geo locations of my other branches. So when searching for my business in Buffalo (we have a physical address in Buffalo), the title tag in the results still says our company name and "Rochester". This of course is likely leading to confusion and actively harming our organic CTR in our branch locations. This is happening in all of the remaining 4 branch locations. I'm at a loss, I tried lengthening the title tag but it still gets cut off. The term Rochester appears (as do the other branch locations) in my meta description for the homepage as well as in the text of the page itself. I haven't gone so far as to remove that yet and hopefully don't have to. Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Doylejg30 -
Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
Hi There, When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adzhass0 -
H2 Tags- Can you have more than 1 H2 tag
Hi All, Screaming frog has identified that we have a few H2 tags on our pages , although we only have 1 H1 tag. We have numerous H3,H4's etc. I am wondering, is it good SEO to have only 1 H2 tag like with H1 tag or can you have more ? thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Ecommerce Site homepage , Is it okay to have Links as H2 Tags as that is relevant to the page ?
Hi All, I have a Rental site and I am bit confused with how best do my H Tags on my homepage I know the H1 is the most important, Then H2 Tags and so on.. and that these tags should really be titles for content. However, I have a few categories (links) on my homepage so I am wondering if I could put these as H2 Tags given that it is relevant to the page . H3 Tags will my News and Guides etc , H4 Tags will the whats on the footer. I am attached a made up screenshot of what I propose for my homepage if someone could please give it a quick look , it would be very much appreciated. I have looked at what some competitors do a lot of them don't seem to have h2's etc but I know it's an important factor for rankings etc. Many thanks Pete dJSFQwI
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Proper 301 in Place but Old Site Still Indexed In Google
So i have stumbled across an interesting issue with a new SEO client. They just recently launched a new website and implemented a proper 301 redirect strategy at the page level for the new website domain. What is interesting is that the new website is now indexed in Google BUT the old website domain is also still indexed in Google? I even checked the Google Cached date and it shows the new website with a cache date of today. The redirect strategy has been in place for about 30 days. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to get the old domain un-indexed in Google and get all authority passed to the new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
Malicious site pointed A-Record to my IP, Google Indexed
Hello All, I launched my site on May 1 and as it turns out, another domain was pointing it's A-Record to my IP. This site is coming up as malicious, but worst of all, it's ranking on keywords for my business objectives with my content and metadata, therefore I'm losing traffic. I've had the domain host remove the incorrect A-Record and I've submitted numerous malware reports to Google, and attempted to request removal of this site from the index. I've resubmitted my sitemap, but it seems as though this offending domain is still being indexed more thoroughly than my legitimate domain. Can anyone offer any advice? Anything would be greatly appreciated! Best regards, Doug
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FranGen0 -
Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?
Hello here, here are my questions for you related to the canonical tag: 1. If I put online a new webpage with a canonical tag pointing to a different page, will this new page be indexed by Google and will I be able to find it in the index? 2. If instead I apply the canonical tag to a page already in the index, will this page be removed from the index? Thank you in advance for any insights! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Any penalty for having rel=canonical tags on every page?
For some reason every webpage of our website (www.nathosp.com) has a rel=canonical tag. I'm not sure why the previous SEO manager did this, but we don't have any duplicate content that would require a canonical tag. Should I remove these tags? And if so, what's the advantage - or disadvantage of leaving them in place? Thank you in advance for your help. -Josh Fulfer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhans1
