Canonical category pages

[Flapjack]

A couple of years ago I used to receive a lot of traffic via my category pages but now I don't receive as much, in the past year I've modified the category pages to canonical.

I have 15 genres for the category pages, other than the most recent sorting there is no sorting available for the users on the cat pages, a recent image link added can over time drop off to page 2 of the category page, for example

mysite.com/cat-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-23. New image link can drop off to page 2.

mysite.com/dog-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-53. New image link can drop off to page 2.

mysite.com/turtle-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-2. New image link can drop off to page 2.

Now on the first page (eg mysite.com/cat-page1.html) I've set this up to rel= canonical =  mysite.com/cat-page1.html

One thing that I have noticed is the unique popup short description tooltips that I have on the image links only appears in google for the first pages of each category page, it seems to ignore the other pages. In view of this am I right in applying canonical ref or just treating it as normal pages.?

thanks

[Dan-Petrovic]

I have noticed exactly the same behavior by Google. They're trying to promote the end page, not the category - even when this is not useful (I think they have a bit of work to do still). If this was my site through I would not tamper with the natural structure of the site but feature key products and pages from pages higher up in the site's hierarchy.

[Flapjack]

Hi

So should I revert to the non canonical page structure and leave it natural?

I also forgot to mention that on the homepage I have a box of recent image links that will also appear on the each of category pages. I don't know if google sees these as duplicate links.

thanks

[Dan-Petrovic]

Hmm... let me clarify this you say:

Now on the first page (eg mysite.com/cat-page1.html) I've set this up to rel= canonical =  mysite.com/cat-page1.html

what about the each subsequent page (... | 2 | 3 | 4... ) what is their canonical value?

[Flapjack]

Hi

on each subsequent category page it refers to the first category page

eg

/cat-page1.html has rel=canonical /cat-page1.html

/cat-page2.html has rel=canonical /cat-page1.html

/cat-page3.html has rel=canonical /cat-page1.html

etc

thanks

[krissy-cca]

Hey,

So you've set it up so that only your first category page will be indexed as it basically saying all the other pages (pg 2, 3 etc) are the same/maybe slightly different.

Is this what you wanted? Also, did those pg 2 and so on rank before you implemented the canonical tag?

DD

[Flapjack]

Hi

All 100 image links on each category page are unique that each point to their respective unique pages. The only thing, is that as new image links get added to the top it can push older content onto page 2,3,4 etc. So I would say each category page is unique.

This isn't what I wanted, I've left it for so long (over a year). It's ever since google introduced that parameter thing, I used to have parameters in the urls but I've fixed that along time ago to .html pages.

Yes the pages on category page 2,3,4 etc used to rank before, but now the 2nd and subsequent pages aren't in the index. In fact if you google the 2nd, third or 4th category pages it brings up the first category page.

thanks

[krissy-cca]

This is because you've canonicalised all pages that come from that page.

E.G.

/cat-page1.html has rel=canonical /cat-page1.html

/cat-page2.html has rel=canonical /cat-page1.html

/cat-page3.html has rel=canonical /cat-page1.html

This is telling Google to look at your pages but if possible index ONLY the cat-page1 as you've recommended it in your canonical tag. If you want the other pages to rank you're going to have to remove the canonical tag.

You could also change the canonical tag to:

/cat-page1.html has rel=canonical /cat-page1.html

/cat-page2.html has rel=canonical /cat-page2.html

/cat-page3.html has rel=canonical /cat-page3.html

This will enable you to add any variable you wish on the end (if you need to) without duplicating the content on a different URL in Google's eyes.

For a test try just changing the canonical tag on the 2nd category page and see what happens.

Hope this helps

DD

[Flapjack]

thanks Damien

I'm going to give this a go once my website re-appears in the search engine. After 1.5 years at number four it's decided to disappear today. I think google anticipated what I was intending to do and employed their new jedi mind tricks to de-rank me. I'll see what tommorow brings.

have a good one.

[krissy-cca]

No Problem - Keep us posted!

[Flapjack]

I'm going to have to hold off on this google have done an update today which is why we've now dropped from p4 to p14. I've posted a message here

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en&start=1360