Posted on 07/09/2020 16:46:31
Well, I made the mistake of reading the manual made by Google. And understanding what canonicals is and when to use them. That was a stupid mistake, as I should instead have made 1000 misunderstandings and just added random URLs to the canonical tags as most people care about that 'something' is there, and not that 'the correct information' is there....
You would not need canonicals on product list pages unless you list the same content over and over again on different URLs. I know I can never win that discussion... Page 1 one of a list of t-shirts has X products - page 2 has X other products. Different content, different URL, no need for canonicals - on the contrary.
Some argue that when you go to page 2, like this: /products/components?PageNum=2, you need a canonical to page one. Why, I will never understand since it is a different URL showing different content... But ANYWAYS, you can set the checkbox to use the first page URL as canonical when on page 2 - see dumps 1 & 2.
If the URL in the browser is /products/components and the calculated canonical is /products/components - it is the same value and the canonical tag has absolutely no meaning... But if you go to page /other-products-list-page/components the calculated canonical for the group /components is /products/components if, and only if, you have added a primary page on the components group. OTHERWISE, Dynamicweb will not be able to understand which URL is the correct one - it could be any page with the product catalog. So you need to have primary or unique group path and each group needs to get specified what page is its primary page to be shown on in order to calculate a precise and correct canonical that is only pointing to exactly one location. See dump 3+4.
Canonicals could be added on all pages no matter what - but for what reason...? And what should the value be? What is the problem to solve...?
Remember the entire purpose of canonicals is not to have something in the meta tags that has the name canonical - it is to tell Google your preferred URL for content (exactly the same content) that has 2 or more URLs. So if Dynamicweb does not have that info - the ONE and UNIQUE path to a piece of information, it cannot be calculated and cannot be inserted without being faulty which you do not want.... Or maybe you want, but it would be a mistake.
Feel free to tell how you think they should work. Maybe I don't understand what canonicals are...