What is the Impact of Canonical to a Canonical Page?

[AnkammaRao]

hey folks,

How does google respond to this, canonical to a canonical page?

i.e page A is canonical to Page which is already/also canonical to PAGE C.

Thanks In advance

AK

[Andy.Drinkwater]

That isn't something you really should be doing. Google uses canonical tags as a strong hint as to the preferred page. Mixed signals could mess this up.

If Page A is Canonical to Page B, which is canonical to Page C, why not have page A canonical to Page C?

-Andy

[AnkammaRao]

Thanks Andy,

what is the impact of having thousands of canonical pages across the website, thought all of them not to the same page. I actually want to "no index", but what if there is back link for that Page?

How does Google treat back-links of a no-index page?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

The main thing to remember about setting up canonical tags, is that they must make sense. For example, it is fine to have 10 pages, each with the same canonical tag referencing one page. However, when you start to get into canonicals referencing each other and jumping around, then Google will probably ignore them, or could cause problems.

With regards back-links to no indexed pages, that is fine. The only time you need to be mindful of this, is if a link points to a page that then gets removed and not redirected.

-Andy