How accurate and quick does Google pick up on canonical tags?

[StevenvanVessum]

Hey Peeps!

I was just wondering what your experiences are in how fast Google will pick up on canonical tags and how often they use the 'strong hint' in stead of leaving it be?

I'm based in The Netherlands and for websites with a decent amount of content and links (where Google indexes new content quickly) they pick up on it within 1-2 weeks.

So far they've ignored some canonical tags on one of my websites. Perhaps that's because they don't agree with the degree in which the pages are similar.

Thanks in advance!

[Vizergy]

Would you care to share those pages?  This is not an issue I have ever had and you have sparked my curiosity.

[matbennett]

It can be slow - particularly on a big site that is crawled slowly.  We've got an over-sized site thanks to some iffy CMS logic that we are trying to get Google to follow canonical instructions on.  It's happening slowly, but is taking months.

[StevenvanVessum]

Honestly Billy, I do not remember precisely. I noticed it like 4 weeks back. I think it was something like a WordPress category page which was created some DC. When I do remember or when I see it again I'll let you know!

[StevenvanVessum]

Thanks for your response Mat! How big is a big site in your case? 10.000+ pages?

Is there any way you could use 301-redirects instead of canonical tags? Honestly, when I get the chance to use a 301-redirect (when the page I'm trying to de-indexed is not usefull for a user) I choose to use a 301-redirect.

[matbennett]

Oh yes... a touch larger than 10k. Big touch too

Some we've been able to 301, however it is mostly a faceted search issues on the site we are working on - so those pages need to stay live to users.