How to Specify Canonical Link Element for Better Performing?

[CommercePundit]

I read Google webmaster centeral's blog post and help article about rel="canonical" which was compiled by Matt.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394

I am working on eCommerce website and found too many duplicate pages with same product as follow.

1. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_62_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
2. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
3. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_55_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
4. www.lampslightingandmore.com/48_57_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
5. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
6. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_56_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
7. www.lampslightingandmore.com/50_63_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
8. www.lampslightingandmore.com/63_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
9. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
10. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_58_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html
11. www.lampslightingandmore.com/68_59_10133/java-bronze-floor-lamp-with-walnut-shade.html

I have consider 1st product as a primary product and set following rel canonical tag on remaining products. Primary product also contain following rel canonical tag.

This was my experience to set canonical tag. But, I am not able to see any improvement on crawling. I was in that assumption due to duplication Google did not crawled my pages. But, Now what is problem with it? How can I fix it and specify proper canonical link element for better crawling?

Note: I am working to compile unique content on each product pages and make it live very soon.

[gfiorelli1]

Maybe I wrongly understood you, so I beg you pardon if my answers is not useful.

From what I understood you have ton of duplicate product pages. So you decided you use rel="canonical" in order to say to the SE that all the 99 product pages of 100 are dupes of the first one.

That means that you are suggesting (rel="canonical" is not a command, but a strong indication/suggestion to the search engines) to not consider for indexing those 99, but just the 1 canonical page.

Therefore, if your problem is to have SE crawling all your pages, and you consider those product pages as to be crawled, therefore canonical tag is not the right thing to do.

If you want all those duplicates to be indexed... then you should have to differentiate all of them, making them unique, as you write in your note.

[CommercePundit]

No, I don't want to index duplicate pages. And, not able to define unique attributes on all duplicate pages. Can you suggest me any alternative?

[CommercePundit]

Hi Gianluca Fiorelli,

You are 100% right. I am not able to see significant changes in crawling after 4 days of implementation. I am thinking to add meta for robots with noindex, nofollow specification on all duplicate product page.

Google will crawl and index only primary product. [That's unique one.] What you think about it? Will it work for me or not?

[gfiorelli1]

Mmm, that could be an idea, but maybe it not the best one. From what I see, the reason of the duplicated content is because the same product is listed in different categories and sub-categories. What I would do is to strip the category id in the URLs, and - when it comes to products - have this kind of URL: www.domain.com/product This way, no matter the category, there will be always just one product URL and no duplication issue. Done that, I would 301 all the old duplicates urls.

[CommercePundit]

Are you talking like this?

I have fix URL structure for all products and manipulate that product in multiple categories.

There will no change in URL structure.

[gfiorelli1]

From what I see, yes.

Just a question: what em89917-x2. in this product URL

http://www.spiderofficechairs.com/officechairs-officestarproducts-em89917-x2.html

corresponds to? product's id?

[CommercePundit]

It's manufacturer part number.

[CommercePundit]

@Gianluca Fiorelli

I have added following Meta in all duplicate products [2 to 11] exclude primary product [1].

I have marked this question as answered but raise one question after observe source code of all product pages. I have implemented following canonical on all duplicate product pages pointing to unique product.

So, now is it require on duplicate pages? Can I remove it from entire website? Because, duplication will not occur due to prevention of indexing for all duplicate products.

Note: I am still surviving from crawling issue. My crawling is still very slow and only 113 pages were indexed by Google.

[gfiorelli1]

Hi!

My suggestion is to never eliminate the canonical tag, as it could also prevent scrapers' stealing content without attribution.

[CommercePundit]

I got it.... I am going to implement as previous one. Thanks for your prompt reply.