Are my canonical re directs working?

[Nightwing]

Buonjourno from Wetherby UK

Ive been battlling sometime to get this site http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk to rank for term Right To Manage. Amongst other tactics ive set up a canonical

• http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/about/right-to-manage.aspx * - Canonical version

http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage.aspx

http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage.aspx

http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/ -

But has this canonical redirect feature worked? The reason i doubt it is i notice when i enter a page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage.aspx which has the below code in place:

rell="canonical" href="http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage.aspx/" />

It does not jump to  http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/about/right-to-manage.aspx

So my question is...

"is the canonical redirect working or not & waht is the best way / tool for diagnosing a canonical error"

Grazie tanto,
David

[Andy.Drinkwater]

A rel=canonical is only a suggestion to Google for which page is the preferred one to deliver the content, so there is never any guarantee that they will deliver content.

However, what I see are 3 pages of identical content - you shouldn't be too surprised to hear that this is duplication and as such, very unlikely that Google is going to rank those pages at all.

I would consider a change of tact that includes removing the duplicate content.

Andy

[Nightwing]

Just to ad ive just decided to ad 301 redirects to bury this problem hopefully permanently

[Nightwing]

Hi Andy,

Yes i know its duplicate conent thats why i added the canonical re directs.

So my question is...

"is the canonical redirect working or not & waht is the best way / tool for diagnosing a canonical error"

Thanks,

David

[Nightwing]

Hi Andy,

Yes i know its duplicate conent thats why i added the canonical re directs.

So my question is...

"is the canonical redirect working or not & waht is the best way / tool for diagnosing a canonical error"

Thanks,

David

[Andy.Drinkwater]

If you pulled that code off your page, you have spelt 'rel' wrong.

But as I already said, rel canonical is not a redirect - a 301 is a redirect. Rel canonical is a suggestion to Google with a preferred page meant for those times when - but if they look at what you are doing, you have very little chance of that working as it stands.

Are you not able to re-write the duplicate content or remove it altogether? Perhaps even think about no-indexing those pages.

Andy

[Nightwing]

Hi Andy,

thank you fir taking time out to look at this again Ive 301 redirect the rogue urls and the souble ll in rel was a typo i passed into my post & mercifully wasnt on the live site.

Thanks again,

David

[Andy.Drinkwater]

You're welcome David

Hope some of that helped.

Andy