Rel=Canonical on a page with 302 redirection existing

[sjcbayona-41218]

Hi SEOMoz!

Can I have the rel=canonical tag on a URL page that has a 302 redirection? Does this harm the search engine friendliness of a content page / website?

Thanks!

Steve

[Webmaster_SEO]

If you want your page to be search engine friendly you have only two options:

1. Change 302 redirect to 301 redirect and pointing it to the correct page.

2. If 301 is not possible then remove the 302 redirect and just keep canonical tag pointing to the correct page

[sjcbayona-41218]

Hi AnkitMaheshwari,

Reason why there's a 302 in the home page URL because the website appends session id's. The best compromise I could think of is to implement a rel=canonical on the home page URL minus the session id i.e. www.website.com

[Dr-Pete]

So, it's something like this?

www.example.com?id=12345

(1) canonical to -> www.example.com

(2) 302-redirect to -> www.example.com

Is the 302 intended so that visitors don't bookmark the ID'ed version? The problem is that the 302 is essentially telling Google to leave link-juice at the ID'ed URL, while the canonical is telling Google to consolidate link-juice to the root URL. I think I get your intent, but it's a mixed signal to the search engines. In this case, I do think that a 301 is the way to go, unless I'm misunderstanding.

[sjcbayona-41218]

Hi Dr. Pete!

Sorry to confuse everyone but it is actually like this:

{What is happening right now}

(1) www.example.com > 302 redirects to > www.example.com?id=12345

{What I think I could recommend as a solution}

(2) What I intend to do is put rel=canonical on www.example.com as the developers from the client side says it is not technically feasible on their platform to remove the session id on the home page url.

[Dr-Pete]

Oh, sorry, it's a session ID, not a tracking/affiliate sort of ID. Honestly, the best solution is to avoid URL-based session IDs entirely, and store it in a cookie or session variable, but yeah, I realize that's not always feasible.

In this case, the 302-redirect should help keep link-juice at the root URL, and is probably a good bet. I think adding the canonical tag to the parameterized versions is a good backup, though. You could also block that parameter in Google Webmaster Tools, since it really has no search value at all.

[sjcbayona-41218]

Thanks for help confirming that I have the right compromise solution Dr. Pete! Yep, I am going to that as well on GWT. Only problem is that it takes those dev's months to put in the html file so I could verify it.