Should I use canonicals? Best practice?

[anneoaks]

Hi there,

I've been working on a pretty dated site. The product pages have tabs that separate the product information, e.g., a tab for specifications, a tab for system essentials, an overview tab that is actually just a copy of the product page. Each tab is actually a link to a completely separate page, so product/main-page is split into product/main-page/specs, product/main-page/resources, etc.

Wondering if canonicals would be appropriate in this situation? The information isn't necessarily duplicate (except for the overview tabs) but with each tab as a separate page, I would imagine that's diluting the value of the main page? The information all belongs to the main page, shouldn't it be saying "I'm a version of the main page"?

[SorinaDascalu]

Rel canonical is used to avoid duplicate content issues, on pages that display the same content under different URLs.

In your case the use of rel canonical is not appropriate.

Best practice, if you want all content to be assigned to the main URL, is to actually put all content on this page. You should get rid of these product/main-page/specs, product/main-page/resources, etc pages and post all the content on product/main-page using divs.

[anneoaks]

Hi Sorina,

Thanks for the response. That makes sense as the content isn't completely duplicate.