Can I use rel=canonical and then remove it?

[jorgediaz]

Hi all!

I run a ticketing site and I am considering using rel=canonical temporary.

In Europe, when someone is looking for tickets for a soccer game, they look for them differently if the game is played in one city or in another city.

I.e.:

"liverpool arsenal tickets" - game played in the 1st leg in 2012

"arsenal liverpool tickets - game played in the 2nd leg in 2013

We have two different events, with two different unique texts but sometimes Google chooses the one in 2013 one before the closest one, especially for queries without dates or years.

I don't want to remove the second game from our site - exceptionally some people can broswer our website and buy tickets with months in advance.

So I am considering place a rel=canonical in the game played in 2013 poiting to the game played in a few weeks. After that, I would remove it.

Would that make any sense?

Thanks!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I would be tempted to look at adding some Schema.org metadata in there Jorge. You can setup dates and event specific information that will give you a new rich snippet result in Google - have a look at the Sports Events on Schema.org. This is what they are there for

Andy

[jorgediaz]

Thanks for the answer Andy. We already have them But Google just chooses wronlgy sometimes. When the user add the date to the query, i.e.: "arsenal liverpool 2012 tickets" then the result is the right one. But for generic searches like: "arsenal liverpool tickets" Google sometimes picks the next event and some other times the one in 2013.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Just remember that rel canonical is a suggestion to Google rather than an order and can still be overlooked.

Have you thought about a 302 temporary redirect instead? This will guarantee the correct page is viewed.

Andy

[MagicDude4Eva]

I would create a generic canonical "/tickets/liverpool_arsenal" which lists the upcoming games. I would create unique canonicals/titles with event information for each game.

Use a 302 to redirect to the most appropriate content (i.e. the upcoming game).