How to use rel canonical ?

I have enabled rel canonical in my global configuration, but it doesn't seem to work... or I don't understand what it is supposed to do.

I thought that it would assign a universal url for the page, regardless of how the user gets to it. Is that not the case? Any help would be appreciated.

Stephanie

In the options of every Flexicontent Type, an option appears called "Canonical Tag: Yes/No"

This option will add inside the html header of your pages the code of a rel canonical tag:

Many pages can be access by different URLs, but in fact display (more or less) the same content.
Example:
http: // www . phoneshop . eee/smartphone/3G
http: // www . phoneshop . eee/3G/smartphone

Also many dynamic pages may contain in the URL content unrelated variables, such as session-id or other user preferences, such as layout, theme, etc, but the content regardless of sessions and user preferences is the same.

A temporary redirect 302 or permanent 301 HTTP redirect is not appropriate. You don't want to move the user to a new URL, nor you want to declare the page as temporary or obsolete.

So how can the Search Engines, know that all these different URLs are the same page?

You do it with special html <link> tag that has the rel (canonical) attribute. The value of the rel attribute will be the "canonical" or "normal" URL of the page.

Search engines need to know this for reasons like not indexing the different URLs as different content thus splitting up your page ranks and also producing unwanted weaker search results (no real advantage to have more pages in Google if they rank much lower).

So this is a hint to the search engines and other tools, that despite the different URLs the displayed content is essential the same.

All versions of the page accessed by different URLs will have the same rel canonical tag.

Be careful not to do the mistake to insert such a tag and make your pages point to wrong URLs as this will de-index the pages having it from the search engine index, or even worse make all your site URLs rel canonical to your home page, as this will de-index all your site pages except your home, and also there is a small chance that Google will think that you are doing SPAM tricks.

Then again this is up to the algorithm of the search engine to decide what the search engine will do.

Regards

Hello,
I'll try to revive this threat as I'm having a problem with rel canonical, which I don't know how to solve (I'm really a SEO newbie).
I've set Canonical Tag ON in FC general configuration.
I was then analysing the website with SEO Doctor 1.6.2 Firefox addon and found that my website pages are not indexable, as can be seen in the attachment.
I've also tried to turn Canonical Tag OFF, but the warning is still there.
What does this mean and how can I fix this problem?
Live test url: test2k14.consulprogett.it
If you need site access, I can send via PM.
Thanks!

Hello

the message is little mis-leading

yes the page will not be indexable separately,

thus Google will create an index for it only if it has not encountered the address mentioned in rel canonical ALREADY

- if it has not encountered the page mentioned rel canonical then it will create the index for it, but add it using the rel canonical url as 'unique' URL of the page

Regards

Hello ggppdk,
thank you for your quick reply.
I'm not sure I've understood completely your explanation (but that's my fault, I'm really a beginner in this regard).
So, if I set Canonical Tag ON in FC, what link will Google index?
test2k14.consulprogett.it/prodot ... ziata.html
OR
test2k14.consulprogett.it/prodot ... a/9/2.html
In any case, the warning should not worry me then, am I right?
Thanks!

Hello

1. Google will index it since it has not encountered a page with rel canonical URL itself,

2. the warning says that this page will not be even indexed if it has different content that rel canonical URL which should be no problem because it does not