Developer forum

+1

Check out this page:

https://doc.dynamicweb.com/documentation-9/how-tos/general/canonical-urls-for-products

Hi Nicolai.

Thank you for the link. I still think there is an issue with self-referencing canonical tags. 

I do think that the canonical tags works if you have multiple urls with the same content. Though would we still like to put a canonical tag, on all the other pages, that just reference itself. 

It's possible on all other pages than inside the Ecom Module. 

Eks. Normal page: https://www.realmaeglerne.dk/realsyn
Eks. Ecom page: https://www.realmaeglerne.dk/bolig/610-2903-rekkendevej-51-rekkende

Any news on this ?

Still nothing on this? 

I do not know what to do with all these many requests for features related to canonicals...

I can propose to release something like this:

1. Always add a canonical if canonicals are active, eventhough it is not required (pages and ecommerce).
2. Always provide a URL, eventhough there are potentially more possible URLs and no path have been specified to the 'right one' (Ecommerce)
   1. If a product is in 2 or more groups, take the primary group, otherwise fallback to the first group
   2. If a group is child to 2 or more groups, take the primary group, otherwise fallback to the group
   3. If a group does not have a primary page, just take the ID of the current page
3. Always use an absolute path using either the current websites primary domain otherwise the domain of the current request (pages and ecommerce).

Canonicals are meant to be unique, which the above is not ensuring, but is basically what is requested across the board.

What are peoples opinion? Print out canonicals when we have an ensured unique path and it does not fit the current URL, or just print something out that maybe/probably/sometimes is unique?

BR Nicolai

Hi Nicolai,

As one of the many people requesting changes to this functionality, I would say that I have heard very often the request to always have a canonical URL value for both Products and Content.

For Products it is true that a product can live under more than one group and it is mandatory to have a group selected. I would go with your suggestions (1 to 3).

The only thing that needs to be added to it is the persistence of these canonical URLs. As long as there are no changes to the settings of the products or Groups, the canonical should be rendered the same way. We have seen issues before with sorting Groups and if you will take the first one defined for the product the order needs to be very consistent.

Thank you very much for considering this change.
Adrian

If you do not specify a primary group and you change sorting of groups, the canonical can change. 

Hi Nicolai,

Correct. What I am worried about is the situation where I have 2 groups assigned to a product, the first one gets deleted (by accident) and then recreated, placed on the first position, but the canonical logic will not take see as the first one.

I have seen this behavior when the SortOrder is not part of the select and SQL decides to sort it differently.

Thank you,

Adrian

Great suggestion - I do not think we will prioritize that currently.

Hi Nicolai.

Thank's for the response. 

I'm not sure why the canonicals (in your example) are not always unique? 

If they by default, are always self-referencing, then they will always refer to a unique url. 

That being said, if you choose to change the canonical setting on fx. "page2" to "/page1", then yes there will be two pages with same canonical tag. But isn't that the point? Aren't we just telling search engines the prefered page to get the information from? 

Bare in mind, I'm not a SEO specialist :)

Canonicals allover the place is coming up - I better refrain from explaining why it is not needed. The earth is flat, you know...

BR Nicolai

Hi Nicolai,
Don't take it personally :)

We all understand your reasons and explanations and some of us are in agreement with you (at least me for one).
However, when it comes to selling it to the customer, it is very complicated. Each customer has its own SEO expert and every SEO expert read a different book.

The customer will always trust an SEO expert rather than a technology expert. In the end, it's the SEO's expert responsibility to deliver results. If we don't comply with the requests, they will always blame us.

As long as this change will not have a negative impact on the SEO result, we will please the SEO experts and the customer and we will all be able to focus on more important and sensitive functionalities for the customer.

Thank you,

Adrian

That is why I will not explain - you cannot argue with scare-tactics and feelings...

But, I just cracked it - this new canonical feature is based on AI, adaptive machine learning and big data, and it is MUCH better than what any SEO expert can tell you! :-)

Now you are talking! Let's see those SEO experts arguing with it :)

Thank you,

Adrian