There has been quite a lot of discussion lately about the use of rel=canonical and we've certainly seen a decent amount of Q&A from SEOmoz members on the subject. Dr. Pete of course blogged about his rel-canonical experiment which had somewhat interesting results and Lindsay wrote a great guide to rel=canonical. Additionally, there seem to be a few common problems that are along the following lines -
- When should I use a rel canonical tag over a 301?
- Is there a way that the rel canonical tag can hurt me?
- When should I not use the canonical tag?
- What if I can't get developers to implement 301s?
I'm going to attempt to answer these questions here.
The 301 Redirect - When and How to Use it
A 301 redirect is designed to help users and search engines find pieces of content that have moved to a new URL. Adding a 301 redirect means that the content of the page has permanently moved somewhere else.
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What it does for users
Users will probably never notice that the URL redirects to a new one unless they spot the change in URL in their browser. Even if they do spot it, as long as the content is still what they were originally looking for, they're unlikely to be affected. So in terms of keeping visitors happy, 301 redirects are fine as long as you are redirecting to a URL which doesn't confuse them.
What it does for the search engines
In theory, if a search engine finds a URL with a 301 redirect on it, they will follow the redirect to the new URL then de-index the old URL. They should also pass across any existing link juice to the new URL, although they probably will not pass 100% of the link juice or the anchor text. Google has said that a 301 can pass anchor text, but they don't guarantee it.
In theory a search engine should also remove the old page from their index so that their users can't find them. This can take a little bit of time but usually can take no longer than a few weeks. I've seen pages removed within a few days on some clients but it's never set in stone.
Where it can go wrong
Not knowing your 301s from your 302s
The classic one which I've seen more than once, is developers getting mixed up and using a 302 redirect instead. The difference with this is that a 302 is meant to be used when content is temporarily moved somewhere else. So the link juice and anchor text is unlikely to be passed across. I highlighted an example of this in a previous blog post, if you go to https://www.dcsf.gov.uk/ you'll see a 302 is used. I first spotted this several months ago and it still hasn't been fixed and I'd assume that this isn't a genuine temporary redirect.
Redirecting all pages in one go to a single URL
Another common mistake I see involves site migration. An example being if your website has 500 pages which are moving somewhere else. You should really put 500 301 redirects on these pages which point to the most relevant page on the new site. However I've often see people redirect all of these 500 pages to a single URL, usually the homepage. Although the intention may not be manipulative, there have been cases of people doing this to try and consolidate all the link juice from loads of pages into one page, to make that page stronger. This can sometimes put up a flag to Google who may come and take a closer look at what's going on.
Matt Cutts talks about this in this Webmaster Tools video:
When you should use a 301
Moving Sites
You should certainly use 301 redirects if you are moving your website to a new location or changing your URLs to a new structure. In this situation, you don't want users or search engines to see the old site, especially if the move is happening because of a new design or structural changes. Google give clear guidelines here on this and advise the use of 301s in this situation.
Expired Content
You should also use a 301 if you have expired content on your website such as old terms and conditions, old products or news items which are no longer relevant and of no use to your users. There are a few things to bear in mind though when removing old content from your website -
- Check your analytics to see if the content gets any search traffic, if it does, do you mind potentially losing that traffic if you remove the content?
- Is there another page on the site which has very similar content that you could send the user to? If so, use a 301 and point it to the similar page so that you stand a chance of retaining the traffic you already get
- Is the content likely to become useful in the future? For example if you have an ecommerce site and want to remove a product that you no longer sell, is there a chance of it coming back at any point?
Multiple Versions of the Homepage
This is another common mistake. Potentially a homepage URL could be access through the following means, depending on how it has been built -
https://seomoz.org
https://moz.com/home.html
https://moz.com/index.html
If the homepage can be accessed via these type of URLs, they should 301 to the correct URL which in this case would be www.seomoz.org.
Quick caveat - the only exception would be if these multiple versions of the homepage served a unique purpose, such as being shown to users who are logged in or have cookies dropped. In this case, you'd be better to use rel=canonical instead of a 301.
The Rel=Canonical Tag - When and How to Use it
This is a relatively new tool for SEOs to use, it was first announced back in February 2009. Wow was it really that long ago?!
As I mentioned above, we get a lot of Q&A around the canonical tag and I can see why. We've had some horror stories of people putting the canonical tag on all their pages pointing to their homepage (like Dr Pete did) and Google aggressively took notice of it and de-indexed most of the site.This is surprising as Google say that they may take notice of the tag but do not promise. However experience has shown that they take notice of it most of the time - sometimes despite pages not being duplicates which was the whole point of the tag!
When to use Rel=Canonical
Where 301s may not be possible
There are unfortunate situations where the implementation of 301 redirects can be very tricky, perhaps the developers of the site don't know how to do it (I've seen this), perhaps they just don't like you, perhaps the CMS doesn't let you do it.Either way, this situation does happen. Technically, a rel=canonical tag is a bit easier to implement as it doesn't involve doing anything server side. Itis just a case of editing the <head> tag on a page.
Rand illustrated this quite well in this diagram from his very first post on rel=canonical:
Multiple Ways of Navigating to a Page
This is a common problem on large ecommerce websites. Some categories and sub-categories can be combined in the URL, for example you could have -
www.phoneshop.com/smartphone/3G
www.phoneshop.com/3G/smartphone
In theory, both of these pages could return the same set of results and therefore a duplicate page would be seen. A 301 wouldn't be appropriate as you'd want to keep the URL in the same format as what someone has navigated. Therefore a rel=canonical would work fine in this situation.
Again, if this situation can be avoided in the first place, then that is the ideal solution as opposed to using the canonical tag.
When dynamic URLs are generated on the fly
By this I mean URLs which tend to be database driven and can vary depending on how the user navigates through the site. The classic example is session IDs which are different every time for every user, so it isn't practical to add a 301 to each of these. Another example could be if you add tracking code to the end of URLs to measure paths to certain URLs or clicks on certain links, such as:
www.example.com/widgets/red?source=footer-nav
When Not to Use Rel=Canonical
On New Websites
I've seen a few instances where rel=canonical is being used on brand new websites - this is NOT what the tag was designed for. If you are in the fortunate position of helping out with the structure of a new website, take the chance to make sure you avoid situations where you could get duplicate content. Ensure that they don't happen right from the start. Therefore there should be no need for the rel=canonical tag.
On Pagination - maybe! At least use with caution
This is a tough one and unless you really know what you're doing, I'd avoid using rel=canonical on pagination pages. To me, these are not strictly duplicate pages and you could potentially stop products deeper within the site from being found by Google. This seems to have been confirmed by John Mu in this Google Webmaster thread. He gives some interesting alternatives such as using javascript based navigation for users and loading all products onto one page.
Having said that, John Mu has made a point of not ruling it out totally. He just advises caution, which should be the case for any implementation of the canonical tag really - except if you're Dr Pete!
Across your entire site to one page
Just a quick note on this one as this is one way which using the rel=canonical tag can hurt you. As I've mentioned above, Dr Pete did this as an experiment and killed most of his site. He set the rel=canonical tag across his entire site pointing back to his homepage and Google de-indexed a large chunk of his website as a result. The following snapshot from Google Analytics pretty much sums up the effect:
Conclusion
In summary, you should use caution when using 301s or the canonical tag. These type of changes have the potential to go wrong if you don't do them right and can hurt your website. If you're not 100% confident, do some testing on a small set of URLs first and see what happens. If everything looks ok, roll out the changes slowly across the rest of the site.
In terms of choosing the best method, it's best to bear in mind what you want for the users and what you want them to still see. Then think about the search engines and what content you want them to index and pass authority and link juice to.
And here's some more from Matt on the subject A rel=canonical corner case
I am going to ask a simple question, but i can't see it being stated anywhere online...
Does "Rel=canonical" Redirect the user? (or does it just tell the search crawlers which page to index?
Question was asked ~3 years ago but I will answer anyway... no, the canonical does not redirect the user. It simply informs the respective crawler (that respects the canonical) the preferred URL for the page in question. The end-user is not affected.
That video from Matt Cutts is old. 301s are now the hottest way of topping google among black hats. When I worked in payday loan industry (a large lender), I used to see these little guys coming and beating us and interesting thing was that those sites lacked both content and quality backlinks to them.
The trick was that they would have a bounch of mid ranked \ low PR relevant websites and they would redirect all of them to one and that one site would jump up. AND IT IS VERY HARD for google to penalize that automatically so they have to look at it manually and that could take forever.
If i want rank some types of my pages , can i use re canonical tag?
I have 4 types pages. companies,products,services and main landing pages that contains summary and part of all 3 other pages types. i want rank just with main landing pages. not other pages.what do i need to do?i ask completed and detailed question here.but your suggestion is very important for me.
Hi there! This is actually a perfect question for our Q&A forum. :) It's pretty unlikely to be seen here.
Hi Matt. I have not enough moz point. :((
Thanks again for a blog post on the topic 301 Redirect or Rel=Canonical. There really seems to be a big demand. But I confess I read them all the time very attentively to be sure not to make some mistakes on that item!
You're always the first commenter :)
Hi I am a new member to this site.I just read your articles,its awesome but I have some small query in mind.You have suggested not to use rel=canonical when you are new to making content.Avoid making duplicate content,in my case my website is 4 month old,it had nothing in child stage but now I am getting huge duplicate content problem while I am using rel=canonical.As I can't use 301 permanent redirect for this huge source of duplicate links.I can give some examples,a post has different(duplicate source)links to view the same page like category page,tag page,archive page,author page,comment page etc.I don't know how to use 301 for this,but I am using rel=canonical.But still now I am getting duplicate content such reply comments links are creating duplicate link for my main post.How to solve this?excluding rel tag or including rel tag?
Will someone add some input in my query?I am in deep trouble.I am getting duplicate content issue and 302 redirection for my whole site..htaccess file has unwanted text yet so what to do?How to solve this?Please help me lol.
Yes I agree with you 301 redirect is better one, Google penalized wrongly use for canonical tag. I use it only when server site scripting is a problem…
Awesome, thanks for the reminder. I think far too many people rely on rel=canonical when really it's not a solution to the problem... They should be using a 301 redirect.
The Matt Cutts video isn't simply talking about 301 lots of pages. He's talking about redirecting lots of domains to a single domain.
I have a unique situation that I am hoping someone can help me with.
A few years back, I knew nothing about SEO or site building in general, and I had a site built for my medical practice by a developer. I realized about a year later that the site was not well built, to the extent that I had to start over from scratch - new site, and totally new url. I basically copied and pasted all of the articles from the old site into the new one, (thus, creating LOTS of duplicate content - I didn't realize it was a problem back then).
I have since left the practice. My former partner likes the other site much better and wanted to keep if for the practice (he doesn't care about SEO, he just wants a resource to send his patients). I took the new site with me when we parted ways. My goal is to do more with the new site than just use it for the practice so I need to get rid of the duplicate content issue. He has agreed to let me tag the duplicate articles on the old site (since we built it together, I am officially still an owner) any way that I want, as long as it doesn't change the look and feel of the site. He doesn't want me to use a 301 Redirect because he wants his patients to stay on his site and not be sent to the new site. Right now Google sees the articles on the old site, and those on the new site are part of the omitted results. I want to switch that around. Google should see the new site instead of the old.
So, what is the best way to tag the relevant pages on his site (there are about 30-40 of them) as duplicate content so it doesn't hurt my site? no index? Rel=Canonical? Both?
Any insight would be VERY helpful. Thanks.
Thank you for this informative essay and the subsequent comments. We have multiple versions of the home page and when we asked about implementing a 301 redirect from the index.html to the .com URL, we were advised that if we used a 301 redirect, the website would look like it is constantly refreshing and it could mess up the site. We did not know how to pursue the issue further.
I beleive you've been advised in correctly.Here is an example of a site who utilise a 301 permanent redirect from the index.html back to the root - they're one of the biggest high street brands in the UK and they don't seem to have any issues:
https://www.boots.com/
try https://www.boots.com/index.html and see what happens, using the http live headers firefox plugin to see the 301 response code.
301 can pass anchor text, I have practical experience... but still 99% sure ;)
anyway nice tutorial about url redirections
Great post, all I need to know about rel canonical in one place.
Great post. I did have a question though. I read through all the comments, and didn't seem to find an answer. We recently had to many 301 redirects - several thousand. We have a very large website, and we had to move some site sections around. Our CMS deals with 301 redirects by using a relative URL structure.
For example,https://site.com/health/oldurl.aspx > 301 redirects to: /health/newurl.aspx
I tried a number of header checkers on the web and they said the 301 redirect was SEO friendly, but when they show the header results, they only show the relative URL as the destination - NOT the ASBOLUTE one. Something in my gut is bugging me about this.
My question is: should I use ABSOLUTE URLs for the destination URL or are RELATIVE URLs okay? I want to be sure we do our best to pass PR and link juice. Thanks for any reply!
Unfortunately, if your using a shared hosting service with an ISP like Yahoo you can't do a 301 redirect so you have to use the rel canonical solution.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13294948/301-redirect-vs-rel-canonical
Hi all,
What's the advice if you are restructuring site, say i have
www.mysite.com/productA.html
and the new structure is
www.mysite.com/products/A
is a canonical link from the first URL to the second URL preferred over 301?
thanks
sam
It might be helpful. It is great. Thank you for your research buddy
For old content of my coupons site i removed the old url and put 301 redirect to another page. Is this is correct?
Hi Paddy,
Thanks for your great post. We are facing the choice of 301 direct or canonical right now. Can you share your insights?
Here is the situation: Our website is www.comm100.com. Before we were marketing several different products. So the homepage is www.comm100.com (company home) and each product has its own product page. For example, the live chat overview page is www.comm100.com/livechat/. However, as we have been promoting the live chat product only for years. Over 95% of visitors to our homepage should actually be looking for the live chat product. Thus to simplify visitors' navigation experience, we'd like to merge the two pages into one.
We want the home page look exactly the same as the live chat overview page and have two options. 1. 301 redirecting www.comm100.com to www.comm100.com/livechat/; 2. Make the two pages have the same content and change the canonical URL of the home page to www.comm100.com/livechat/.
Which option is more appropriate in this situation?
Look forward to hearing from you. Thanks.
Anna
[links removed by editor]
Google has made a good guide on pagination: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/16637... generally canonical is for duplicate content (since your page is not the same on each paginated result, you should not use rel=canonical - however from my experience, it does not seem to harm if you point out to the first page)
When our cms do not allow us to use 301 for redirection then what is the best alternate other than rel conical.
I know this is an old article and things may've changed slightly, but these days we use canonical tag on new sites in relation to mobile specific content (making m.example.com bowing down to example.com for er, example). I remain unclear though as to whether to use 301 or canonical to point to the root rather than index.html, as they are after all, essentially the same page - although SEO tools can flag this as a duplicate issue.
This article couldn't have come at a better time. I just got done talking to development team for one client the importance of 301s and another client when he should/shouldn't use rel=canonical tags. Great post! It's going in my delicious accoiunt. Thanks!
the urls on my wordpress site redirected perfectly fine , but the ip is not redirecting to the url. When i enter the ip on the browser it takes me to my website but it does not show the url. How to redirect my ip to my urls. I guess they call it ip canonicalization
I added a canonical tag per the advice of my SEO specialist, and it turns out there was a bug in our URL engine. We have dynamically generated SEO-Friendly URL's, and google was able to "somehow" turn our normal URL's inside out, or someone else did from somewhere outside of our site, so google started indexing up duplicate pages over and over, eventually kicked 40 of my sub-directory pages off the engine. I got the bug fixed, and waiting for google to shine some light back down on me. I was on page 1 for 40 keywords, livin it up! Then ZERO. Be "EXTREMELY" careful not to screw up your canonical tags. I am the new mascot "Don't Mess These UP". LOL.
Here's an example of some canonical screwups:
(Note these URL's are just examples, don't click them that would be dumb):
1. These all are the exact same page:
https://www.example.com
https://example.com
https://example.com/home
https://example.com/index.php
https://www.example.com/home
https://www.example.com/index.php
So as you can see, if you do not get all of these consolidated to 1 URL, google will think you've made 5 additional copies of your home page. Now imagine this across a 500 to 1000 page website? Your rankings will be toast and your site eventually deranked or non-existent. Google takes this stuff SERIOUS.
My problem was there was a bug in the last crumb of my URL:
What you see here is a full path to a page called "who cares how you SEO". This is great and all, but somehow google got its hands on a different version.
https://example.com/how-to-seo/how-not-to-seo/who-cares-how-you-seo
Different version of my URL that google managed to get its hands on:
https://example.com/how-to-seo/how-not-to-seo/who-cares-how-you-seo/who-cares-how-you-seo/who-cares-how-you-seo/who-cares-how-you-seo/who-cares-how-you-seo/who-cares-how-you-seo
And I went in to my system and tested this and found my system allowed it. So I had to break it down and get it fixed in every way possible. Be sure to check your scripts if you use dynamically generated URL's, you could be delisted from google as soon as tomorrow for this kind of stuff, and PS: You won't get a warning from google either --- they just kick you off, no letter, no kiss goodnight.
I'm on day 4 waiting for google to bring my site back in, nada yet.
Thanks for the article!!!
Nathan
Hey - I know this is a really old post, but the link to Dr Pete's experiment is broken... think it should be https://www.seomoz.org/blog/catastrophic-canonicalization
Thanks for letting us know -- fixed!
Thanks for the great post. I have a question and I've looked everywhere for the asnwer and haven't found it wither here or in Google's Webmaster Forum. Can a 301 redirect be done from a webpage whose location has not changed? In other words, there's an old page floating around our website. It's still there, same location, same URL. Will a 301 redirect from that old page to a new page really work? Or if someone tried to visit the old URL, would they see the old page [because it still exists at its original location]?
I wrote a blog about this. Both 301s and canonicals are relevant. Don't forget the sitemap.xml: https://simonchristie.wordpress.com/
This is very good information for me. Before reading this post. redirect 301 is just a method to permanenetly move the content.But now i have come to know the use of this redirect.
Hi Paddy,
Firstly thanks for the great post and creating a really useful resource for anyone trying to get their heads round this topic.
I just had a quick question relating to putting a 301 redirect on the /index.html/php... page.
I thought that by default the usual idea is to set /index.html/php... as the servers default document? Thus by adding a permanent redirect from the index.html/php... file to the root of the site wouldn't you create an infinite loop?
Sorry, there is probably something I am missing here but thought I would ask.
Thanks again for the post.
Cheers,
Nick
There is actually a way of redirecting the index document somewhere else without setting a redirect loop.
Something like this should work:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.html
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.html$ https://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
I use 301 redirects on a Wordpress blog that has changed its permalink structure, but I'm considering swapping for rel=canonical somehow (maybe by writing a plugin or changing an existing plugin) for speed reasons.
This fits the category where you say you should use 301 redirects, but Google Webmaster Tools is asking me to change that on the basis that it causes another request, thereby slowing down the serving speed. At the minimum, you introduce a round-trip time delay by doing a 301 redirect.
I believe having a high serving speed is helping my rankings based on experience and I am trying to optimise to get a really good speed. I guess it's something I would have to test.
Hello,
I´ve got to deal with duplicate content but I´m still not sure if there is a solution.Different articles should be published with one URL but the branding of the site and the navigation links around the articles will be different.
Every brand works on it`s own but shares the same articles and no one wants to be excluded from Google. That`s the problem.
So, neither 301 redirect nor the canonical will work as all sites should be indexed because of the different branding. Is there any other solution to this? Or is it just a bad idea to word this way?
Regards,
Poo
Three more things I'd like to add
1) While I haven't read much about it yet my (personal) hunch is given the current emphisis on "freshness" and "up to date-ness" we're going to see SERPs dropping sites/URIs that no longer exist from their results. Therefore, it's unlikely that a site is going to show up on a results page and not be there. Unless of course the site has just moved. The bots will go back a couple times and if the pages are still MIA then they'll be dropped from the index.
2) Therefore, 301s are mainly for passing rank juice. If you don't have a lot of juice then it might not even be worth worrying about. More likely than not your new site will be "reindexed" soon enough. Who knows, a fresh start might be a plus?Worst case, find your top 10 or top 20 links in and get them to update.
3) I believe there was something said about rank juice not being passed forward in full. As far as I can tell, there's no reason to expect that it should be. Sure you can redirect to a new page but at some point the indexing has to be based on what is now, not what was. If the new site has been restructured, the content changed, etc. then it's only natural that's going to effect ranking as well. Some juice should pass forward but ultimately the indexing is going to be based on what is, not what was, eh?
BTW, I think I forget to say, great article. It certainly something we all need to be reminded of.
Sorry for the rookie question. If I own a blog, which is redirected to a custom domain, but still available from both the original blogspot address and the custom domain, shall I apply the canonical tag?
Thanks!
I think the short answer to this is that your blogspot address should forward onto your custom domain with a 301 permanent redirect - have you followed these instructions at blogspot?
https://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=12451&answer=55373
Nice user friendly URL from Google there btw ;)
Great post, not too techy and easily understandable by newbies. Was having this discussion the other day but this has cleared up a lot of confusion.
I didn't really know what the canonical tag was for til now, thanks for the education! clearly written and actionable - love it ;-)
I have only used the rel=canonical phrase once so far. It solved a problem with server conflict which was preventing the redirection from working properly. I only used it on the homepage where I needed it. I gather that overuse causes google to penalise much of the site?
Hi Carly,
From the Matt Cutts video above, it does seem that a large number of 301s being implemented could cause Google to come and take a closer look at a site.
I'm yet to see any examples of Google penalising for misuse of the rel=canonical tag, although you can certainly hurt yourself if you implement it in the wrong way!
Paddy
If you are using Wordpress there is a few good plugins that prevent you from doing dumb stuff as you have to manually add the canonical link, its time consuming but prevents late night errors that lead to accidental results like Dr Pete's experiment. If you aren't always having full control over developers it's good to have some manual safe guards in place!
Hey Guys,
Firstly let me state I'm not an SEO Pro, I don't even work in the SEO field, I just have a keen interest in SEO.
I'm curious about why you shouldn't use rel=canonical right from the outset (on a new site). Are you penalised for it?
The reason I query this is because I'd have assumed that it would help 'set things straight' right from the start. For example: the URL I used to get here is this: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/301-redirect-or-relcanonical-which-one-should-you-use?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+seomoz+(SEOmoz+Daily+Blog) (Google Reader). The URL I then used to write this comment is this: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/301-redirect-or-relcanonical-which-one-should-you-use?301-redirect-or-relcanonical-which-one-should-you-use (because I had to sign up first and was then sent back to this URL). As far as I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong, this would be considered two seperate URL's and if Google had followed them in to SEOMoz from different websites they would be processed as such? But the use of rel=canonical would sort this out, right? (https://www.seomoz.org/blog/301-redirect-or-relcanonical-which-one-should-you-use) So these are things that are beyond the control of developer / SEO pro unless rel-canonical is used.
So wouldn't it be good practice to implement rel=canonical right from the very start or have I missed something fundamental here?
Cheers.
Phil.
Have to say that some of my SEO team have had many a client debate on how much link juice would be passed on 301 redirects and that in many cases multiple re-directs in my experience are interpreted as suspicious and or spammy by the engines. Good post, but it is amazing just how many web designers/agencies will inform a client that this is the best way forward, purely for an easy fix seo service.
<removed link>
Subtle spam is subtle.
Nah trax, subtle spam is SPAM :-p
Mmmm, I think I will leave the link just because it makes me laugh a little.
There has to be some sort of style points to be given. Not to mention the nature of whom he is spamming.
About as subtle as a 1 year old without his binky.
For Mike's benefit, is there a way to add plain, black, undecorated links to comments? Bright blue text links really makes it hard to spam ;-)
Sorry everyone, that link was blinding me and apparently I'm not as nice as Casey. :) Just removed it.
Hey Phil
FWIW, I think Morgan might have unintentionally misspoke a bit. (While I too might be mistaken), I'll try to clarify:
Redirects are for when pages have moved. I think we all agree on that :)
On the other hand, canonical is a way of allowing a site to define a "page" indepentent of what the URI is. From the bots' perspective it's saying, "Ignore what you see in "real" URI and use *this* URI when indexing." So in the cases where there's a lot of "stuff" in the URI - for example e-comm - canonical is a means to allow a site to manually override that mess and give the bots an exact URI that should be used to index that "page"."Page" is in quotes because without canonical bots define "page" as a unique URI. With canonical "page" because whatever you say it is.
Another example might be, you tag (with Google URL builder) any links you spread. This might be good for you but it could confuse the indexing. The tags might be different but the ones that go to the same page should be indexed as the same page. Canonical lets you make that happen.
IMHO, the example he gives at the end of the 301 Redirect section about various URIs for a home page is actually an example for canonical. You could use a redirect but again, that's for moved pages. Canonical is for tying established pages together, as in his example.
In short, I agree with you, there's no bad reason (that I know of) for not using canonical from the get go.
Thanks for that :)
Hi Phil,
Thanks for the comment!
I'd agree that in the situation you give, the use of rel=canonical could solve duplicate content issues that are unavoidable when the site is built. So that would be fine. What I was getting at more in my post was that some developers and SEOs seem to see rel=canonical as an excuse not to build pages in the correct way from the start. This sounds harsh but I believe its true. Rel=canonical was never designed for that, it was designed to help fix issues that can't be fixed any other way.
If some situations are unavoidable when a site is being built, then by all means rel=canonical should be used. But I personally think it should be a last resort.
Paddy
Thanks for that.
Yourself and Chief Alchemist, above, have helped put it into perspective for me.
Cheers.
hi Paddy,
Thanks for great post. I completely agree with you that we should build link system carefully from the start.
But I still wonder about this case:
The tagged URL for tracking campaign in GA: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/301-redirect-or-relcanonical-which-one-should-you-use?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+seomoz+(SEOmoz+Daily+Blog)
I cannot use canonical tag to tell bots the right URI to index (without utm variables). Should I use Parameter Handling from Google Webmaster Tool to tell Google bot ignore these variables?
Of course, this solution only works for Google bot, not Yahoo bot or Bing bot...
thanks!
Thanks for the post, great topic and something we SEO's face on daily basis. I love the Google Bot image :)
Really great article, Many Thanks to Paddy_Moogan. Redirects have been "moved" long time ago from black hat seo to gray hat and may be to white hat :)
Another good resource that will help of webmasters that are needed .htaccess redirect is: www.snipt.net/nikosdion/the-master-htaccess/
Hi!
great article but you forget the "syndication" for rel=canonical with external site(s).
Use the rel = canonical when your calalog is used by a partner. In this case you must:- Make a rel = canonical from the partner to the equivalent page on your site- Complete with a tag meta name robots "noindex, follow" to pass the link juice- If necessary, add a "traditional" link (href) to the source,
This allows you to be visible in Google but to gain authority through your partners.
David
Hello, I understand from your post that you are saying that when you are first building a site it makes a lot of sense to use 301 redirects for www.site.com and site.com instead of rel=canonical. The problem, however, is this, WHY would someone want to use a redirect that diminishes their link juice, it doesn't matter if it is only a little bit, small percentages make a big difference.
So can anyone comment on using the rel=canonical tag? Saying you are going to use a 301 redirect is like saying, "oh, let's just put my 1million in a mutual fund that gives .2 percent less than another fund because I don't know what I am doing."
Now, no one in the right mind would give up free percentages with money like that, I don't see why it is different with 301 redirects. I don't give a damn that the 301 redirect is clean and nice, BEING THE FACT there is an ALTERNATIVE (rel=canonical) someone please justify why you would ever throw away free link juice under any circumstance?
The only reasoning I could see is if it was very dangerous to use rel=canonical.
One more thing, on a new site, even going forward in the future, doesn't using the 301 redirect mean all new links that go to the pre redirected site, i.e. they go to site.com before being redirected to www.site.com, will have some link juice hijacked?
Thanks.
Justin
Hmm are you saying that using a 301 redirect loses link juce but a rel=canonical does not? That is not the case at all. The canonical tag loses as much link juice (if not more, some will say). Plus Bing only considers the canonical tag a "hint" so who knows if in that case it passes link juice at all.
Hi all
great article btw.
I have one question regarding 301 redirect(the one that Matt Cutts stated in his video presentation):
how a website owner can find all the 301 redirected domains to his main website, because this can be a BIG problem. if someone from the competition will 301 redirect 1000+ domains to his website ?!?! is there any online tool or something, because I didn't find anything on google webmasters tools.
Thank you
You could buy many expired domains that are still getting pageranks, and forward them to your site via DNS. Lots of "SEOs" do that, but I don't think that it's too white hat, just very spammy.
Actually I'm not looking for this , I'm just looking to protect my website.
Any ideas seomoz guys !?!!?!?
Hi Paddy
What do you believe would happen if you added a rel canonical tag to a penalised site, saying the correct url is your competitors url ?
If I remember rightly I believe that Google said that although the rel=canonical tag can work cross-domain, the content would have to be exactly the same or appreciably similar for them to apply it. I'd like to think that Google would be smart enough to interpret this correctly.
thanks for the post.
Really useful!
Nice article Paddy :-) thanks for the clear way you provided info on how to use (and how not to use) this reletively new linking format. A nice mix of graphics and text makes it easy to 'get' what you mean. :-)
Is it correct to use canonical for alias-websites (with identitical content) on multiple domains?
In Belgium it's common to use e.g. a .nl and .be domain for the same website (since the content is identical and in the same language) to create a greater audience for your website.
If we don't use canonical, Google will notice the content for these domains is identitical and it may have an impact on the ranking. Or isn't this the best solution?
This does bring up a question I have regarding a site I'm working with in the next month:
The website intends to launch with a promotion that will help attract visitors to our site. The promotion page is most likely going to get linked to from a few larger sites that will be passing some strong pagerank to the promotional page. However, once the contest is over, we don't want people to be going to that page anymore. More specifically, we don't want it outranking the homepage.
Should we just 301 redirect that page to our homepage, or should we be using the canonical tag to pass its linkjuice back to the homepage? When it comes down to things, the promotion page becomes worthless once a certain date passes, and at that point any existing click-throughs to the page will just be to get to the main site anyway.
As I stated above, the rel=canonical is usually a good solution, but is rarely the best solution. Of course that's not true of all cases, but in this one I'd say setting up a 301 redirect would be better. Although I might redirect it to a relevant page, and not necessarily the home page. If a user clicks on a link that they think are going to take the to a promotion and they get sent to the home page with no explantation that makes for a bad user experience.
Thanks for the reply Jenita.
My concern is more or less getting value out of the pagerank once the contest expires. By the time this promotion is over, it will have been rotated off of the main sites we will be promoting it on and won't be generating too many (if any at all) new links. Our main purpose is gaining value for the main page through these websites that link to us, since everything they post is archived and still holds a lot of value.
At this point the 301 redirect feels like it will be best, but I'll have to research more on rel=canonical before we make that decision. I may just experiment with the tag in order to see how much of an impact it has, as we'll have other opportunities for promotions like this in the future and it won't be a huge blow if something goes wrong (we'll probably be generating most of our regular readers via social media at first anyway).
Thanks for your detailed explantion. But I have some questions.
You are telling, in New website using rel=canonical is not good for Optimizaiton.But I want to index my site without www in all search engines.
So I have installed my script without WWW. and put the following code in the header.
<link href="https:// domain url" />
And I'm doing linkbuilding without www also. If anyone links my wesbite with www it will redirect to described url in the canonical tag.
I've done this for my brand new website. and it is indexed without WWW. But I didn't see any problem in ranking too.
My Question: While my competitor has the www domain, Is there any plroblem in the future rankings?
It doesn't matter if you use the www or not. However the better solution is to set up 301 redirects from the www to the non-www version, rather than using the rel=canonical tag.
I think there shouldn't be any problem, there are only few people who type www in searches, you might miss them (if you type www+keyword in google domain with www is most likely to appear)
Thanks for this in-depth post, Paddy! I've been going back and forth trying to describe the difference to a client, so this will help as a reference for us.
Perfect timing for this post because we're doing a little site restructering and can't decide the best method - maybe you can make a recommendation.
Currently under our "About Us' section we have the following pages...
Management pageNews PageCredentials Page
We want to kinda consolidate that into one "about" page. Since all the content of those 3 pages would now be on one page, would we:
redirect, Canonical Tag Or do nothing?
Thanks in advance
As Lindsay stated in her recent post on the canonical tag, there is almost always a better solution than the rel=canonical. In this case a 301 is the best option and the canonical is 2nd best. Often times people have to use the rel=canonical due to dev issues, but it usually not the "best" solution.
Hi Guys,
I need help from all of you.
I have old e-commerce which currently i had created new website .
for example :
abc.com to betaabc.com
abc.com have 25000+ pages need to redirect to betaabc.com page.
Now i want to all 25000 + pages which i need to redirect for new one (website).
So guys if you have any idea about it ?
please share and let me know if you have any idea about it. reply me on [email protected]
Thanks !!!
- Ram