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Question about canonical.. a stupid question, but I don't get it

by IamJeez
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Let's say we have an ecommerce site.

We have a category A

Beneath those is category A1, A2, A3, A4

Now we want to make A the "main" site in search.

Making A1 to a4 a no follow, is that the best option then?

When we choose to make Category A 'canonical', how does google understand that A1 to A4 belongs to A?
#canonical #question #stupid
  • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
    Originally Posted by IamJeez View Post

    Let's say we have an ecommerce site.

    We have a category A

    Beneath those is category A1, A2, A3, A4

    Now we want to make A the "main" site in search.

    Making A1 to a4 a no follow, is that the best option then?

    When we choose to make Category A 'canonical', how does google understand that A1 to A4 belongs to A?
    You use the canonical mostly search results that you can order by different criterias example:

    Go to Amazon and search for "Tvs" it is goint to give you one url (that is the canonical) after that you can order the information by color, price, provider etc... and each one of those criterias will give you different urls, then, you add the first url (the canonical) to all the other result pages to tell google that the one you wanted crawled and ranked is the first one.
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    • Profile picture of the author IamJeez
      Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

      You use the canonical mostly search results that you can order by different criterias example:

      Go to Amazon and search for "Tvs" it is goint to give you one url (that is the canonical) after that you can order the information by color, price, provider etc... and each one of those criterias will give you different urls, then, you add the first url (the canonical) to all the other result pages to tell google that the one you wanted crawled and ranked is the first one.
      So, the A1 to A4 still gets found, however, you give priority to Category A so google understand what it should focus on when a search for a specific keyword is done?
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Nofollow has nothing to with anything.
        Neither does canonical.

        You are mixing up things have have nothing to with anything in
        your question.

        You can't force google to do anything, although many try.
        Google could care less what belongs to what, as each page
        stands on its own.

        If your site is properly structured, links set up right, etc., there
        is no problem except outranking other sites.

        Paul
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        If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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        • Profile picture of the author IamJeez
          Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

          Nofollow has nothing to with anything.
          Neither does canonical.

          You are mixing up things have have nothing to with anything in
          your question.

          You can't force google to do anything, although many try.
          Google could care less what belongs to what, as each page
          stands on its own.

          If your site is properly structured, links set up right, etc., there
          is no problem except outranking other sites.

          Paul
          What I want to understand is how Google uses Canonical.

          What I understand, but correct me when I am wrong, I am here to learn is that Canonical is to help webmasters and site owners eliminate self-created duplicate content in the index.

          So, lets say we have 1 category page.

          Beneath that 4 other pages, which are related to the first page.

          For example, exactly the same product, BUT, in different sizes (40x60, 70x100 etc)

          Then duplicated content might happen and with canonical you make sure google "understands" that category A is the "mama".
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        • Profile picture of the author IamJeez
          Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

          Nofollow has nothing to with anything.
          Neither does canonical.

          You are mixing up things have have nothing to with anything in
          your question.

          You can't force google to do anything, although many try.
          Google could care less what belongs to what, as each page
          stands on its own.

          If your site is properly structured, links set up right, etc., there
          is no problem except outranking other sites.

          Paul
          Nofollow is more when you don't want a page or an image indexed at all. So I understand why that would have nothing to do with my example.
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          • Profile picture of the author pororo
            Originally Posted by IamJeez View Post

            Nofollow is more when you don't want a page or an image indexed at all. So I understand why that would have nothing to do with my example.
            NoIndex is the one you are talking about not Nofollow!
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            • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
              Originally Posted by pororo View Post

              NoIndex is the one you are talking about not Nofollow!
              Yep. Got me scratching my head. Indeed you should not use nofollow in your internal links because it's pointless and just loses link juice.

              Originally Posted by IamJeez View Post

              Then duplicated content might happen and with canonical you make sure google "understands" that category A is the "mama".
              I'm not sure what's difficult in this scenario. Take the sub categories, and have all of their canonical point to the parent category. Then you've politely asked for Google to consider category A to be the one to use.
              Signature
              Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
              Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

              What's your excuse?
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