Canonical issue in open site explorer

[EugeneF]

When I look at my back links in OSE, I see two landing pages on my site that are really the same page.  www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/(affiliate code here)

These show different inbound link characteristics and page authority.

The page in question has a rel=canonical tag.

Am I doing something wrong?

[smstv]

I would contact my server administrator to have them force your 301, and pages www.example.com/(client code)

If that you dont get support from, I will have my Hosting administrator help you further with this question. Cause if you dont have access to the Default home page, all your main pages utilize the code for, it will be over looked.

Let me know

[EugeneF]

I do have access to the page.  I am slightly confused by your reply.  I was thinking that this was a reporting issue with the OSE.   I shouldn't need to use a 301 when a

rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com" />

is in the header

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Eugene - It sounds like you are doing things right.

Open Site Explorer diplays Link Metrics for every single page in it's index as if it is independent - even if it 301 redirects or points a canonical link towards another page.

For example we can see that the inbound link metrics for the SEOmoz.org/blog differ from the metrics for SEOmoz.org/blog/ (note the extra backslash).

One advantage of this method is that we can see if our external links are pointing to the right page, and correct them if necessary. At this time, OSE will notify you if the URL you are checking 301 redirects to another page, but doesn't tell you if it has a canonical. OSE will also calculate redirected metrics into calculating scores such as MozRank and Domain Authority, and I believe there are plans (if they haven't been implemented already) of including canonical metrics into these calculations.

But back to you - what you really need is a way to make sure you've implemented your canonical tags correctly. You can check the duplicate title/duplicate content and the canonical reports in the SEOmoz PRO platform. You can also use the MozBar to check canonical tags, or a tool like URI valet to make sure your canonical tags are pointed to the right URL.

This is important because you want to avoid canonicalization errors that can lead to a loss of rankings and search engine visibility. That said, from your brief description, it sounds like you're doing everything right.

[EugeneF]

Thank you.  I was concerned I might have split my juice between two versions.

"OSE will also calculate redirected metrics into calculating scores such as MozRank and Domain Authority, and I believe there are plans (if they haven't been implemented already) of including canonical metrics into these calculations."

This is interesting.  If I understand this correctly, this tells me that when you have inbound links with affiliate codes and such attached to the URL that MozRank is not calculated correctly; it is split between two "versions" of the same page.