How rel=canonical works with index, noindex ?

antorome

Hello all,

I had always wondered how the index,noindex affects to the canonical. And also if the canonical post should be included in the sitemap or not.

I posted this

http://www.comparativadebancos.co...

and with a rel=canonical to this that was published at the beginning of the month

http://www.comparativadebancos.co...

but then I have the first one in google

http://www.google.com/search?aq=f...

May be this is evident for you but, what is really doing the canonical? If I publish something with the canonical pointing to another page, will it still be indexed by google but with no penalty for duplicate content? Or the usual behaviour should have been to havent indexed the first post but just the second one?

Should I also place a noindex in the first post in addition to the canonical?

What am I missing here?

thanks

perfectweb

According to Google a rel=canonical is just a hint 9although they say they strongly honour it) - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html. This might explain why your old page is still showing up int he results.

Has your new page been indexed yet?

antorome

Is it the opposite. The new one has a rel=canonical to the old one because it was written with the same content that the old one but then it appears in the index.

Then the new one has been indexed and I thought it wasnt going to be indexed. But at the same time it ranks much higger than the old one...

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antorome

I have already done it but my question come after this one

http://www.seomoz.org/q/detailed-revisions-of-articles-coexisting-with-automated-description-articles

Where Rand suggest me to do the canonical thing I am explaining here. So my doubt is why it is indexing the new post better than the old one and how this is supposed to work.

From my understanding and also from your link, if I use rel=canonical is the "canonical" url the one that has to be indexed and not the one with "rel=canonical" but it has not been my case and now I have both indexed...

Any suggestion?

AnthonyYoung

you should give it time to settle down in the SERPS ... the results are muddy for a while but your canonicals will eventually show up if they have been implemented correctly.

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BlueprintMarketing

I would say that rel=canonical is one of the single most vital parts of a website no matter how it's Written or hosted all must be set up to appropriately take traffic and simply tell Google I'm not trying to duplicate my content here is my <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/" /> and that way if anyone does haven't come across your content and try to make it their own they will be the ones penalized for stealing it not you. Always put this tag in the page that you have created and the one that you want Google to understand is your copy of your website content here is some info from Matt Cutts at Google as well as Wikipedia hope I am of help

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/

A canonical link element is an HTML element that helps webmasters prevent duplicate content issues by specifying the "canonical", or "preferred", version of a web page[1][2][3] as part of search engine optimization.

Duplicate content issues occur when the same content is accessible from multiple URLs.[4] For example, <tt>http://www.example.com/page.html</tt> would be considered by search engines to be an entirely different page to<tt>http://www.example.com/page.html?parameter=1</tt>, even though both URLs return the same content. Another example is essentially the same (tabular) content, but sorted differently.

In February 2009, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced support for the canonical link element, which can be inserted into the section of a web page, to allow webmasters to prevent these issues.[5] The canonical link element helps webmasters make clear to the search engines which page should be credited as the original.

According to Google, the canonical link element is not considered to be a directive, but a hint that the web crawler will "honor strongly".[1]

While the canonical link element has its benefits, Matt Cutts, who is the head of Google's webspam team, has claimed that the search engine prefers the use of 301 redirects. Cutts claims the preference for redirects is because Google's spiders can choose to ignore a canonical link element if they feel it is more beneficial to do so.[6]

[edit]Examples of the `canonical` link element

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

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/directory/page.html" />

```

Andropenis_Australia

Blueprint, as far as I understand it can't really be used to prevent people stealing your content because you need to have to similar versions and place the tag pointing to the one that is of lesser value or that you don't want to come up in place of the original. Or are you saying if you find some of your content elsewhere offsite you can place a canonical link to it, and this will tell the spiders it is your content rather than theres?

Antonio, if you have placed the tag on the newer page pointing to the older page you are telling the spiders that the newer page is the preferred/more original content.

BlueprintMarketing

Hi,

I agree that it will not help you to too much with stolen content. Unless Google has indexed you 1st they would probably give you 1st rights to the disputed content. The reason I believe you are getting with such good results on Google a non-indexed URL or what should be nonindexed is Google indexes everything regardless and from what Matt Cutts said "According to Google, the canonical link element is not considered to be a directive, but a hint that the web crawler will "honor strongly" "

my belief is Google is throwing more honor to dealing with the canonical.

I hope I was of some help.

Sincerely,

Thomas Zickell

BlueprintMarketing

I im saying that it is important to Google to tell them more what you want to use as your content without possible parameter "/" "www" adding a duplicate content penalty to your website.

Everett

Antonio,

I came into this question a little late so I'm not sure how it was back when you asked it, but right now the problem I see is that the page that does exist ( http://www.comparativadebancos.com/mejores-depositos-bancarios-de-marzo-de-2011/ ) has a rel canonical tag pointing to the page that doesn't exist ( http://www.comparativadebancos.com/depositos/marzo/ ), which returns a 404 response code.

I think right now the best thing you can do would be to change the rel canonical tag on /mejores-depositos-bancarios-de-marzo-de-2011/ to be http://www.comparativadebancos.com/mejores-depositos-bancarios-de-marzo-de-2011/ .

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