Page content is not very similar but topic is same: Will Google considers the rel canonical tags?

[vtmoz]

Hi Moz community,

We have multiple pages from our own different sub-domains for same topics. These pages even rank in SERP for related keywords. Now we are planning to show only one of the pages in SERP. We cannot redirect unfortunately. We are planning to use rel canonical tags. But the page content is not same, only 20% is similar and 80% is different but the context is same. If we use rel canonicals, does Google accepts this? If not what should I do? Making header tags similar works? How Google responds if content is not matching? Just ignore or any negative score?

Thanks

[ThompsonPaul]

Google's really clear that they expect canonicalised pages to be "essentially identical" in content - for example, the same list of products, but sorted differently by price, size etc.

In the situation you're describing, the content is far too different to be considered an equivalent page and so the canonical tags will almost certainly be ignored (which is what search engines do with canonical tags that aren't used correctly) Canonicalisation is very literal about the actual content on the page - it doesn't consider similar contexts, only actual words and content. As such, it probably wouldn't' be worth the time to add the tags to pages where it was going to be ignored anyway. But no, they've never indicated there's any penalty beyond simply ignoring inappropriate usage.

Hope that helps?

Paul