If you have a mobile version of your main site, would you use rel=“canonical” pointing to the full version?
Would you exclude the majority of pages from being indexed due to duplicate content using “noindex”?
Re: Would you use “canonical” link on Mobile Site?
I think you would point it to the main page of the mobile site, not the full version. Well, assuming of course that your mobile site is different from your full version site, which I would suspect to be true in most cases.
Re: Would you use “canonical” link on Mobile Site?
[QUOTE=gaydemon;87741]If you have a mobile version of your main site, would you use rel=“canonical” pointing to the full version?
Would you exclude the majority of pages from being indexed due to duplicate content using “noindex”?[/QUOTE]
Personally, I would avoid the canonical tag on mobile sites (unless it’s dealing with canonicalization of URLs within the mobile site).
Instead, use <link rel=alternative media=… and have media=handheld links on the main site and media=screen links on the mobile site.
Having a canonical tag point to the main page of the site would be highly counter productive. You’d be telling Google to only index the home page and not other pages on the mobile site.
Re: Would you use “canonical” link on Mobile Site?
oh of course, I meant the canonical tag for the index page of your mobile site
Re: Would you use “canonical” link on Mobile Site?
[QUOTE=rawTOP;87750]Personally, I would avoid the canonical tag on mobile sites (unless it’s dealing with canonicalization of URLs within the mobile site).
Instead, use <link rel=alternative media=… and have media=handheld links on the main site and media=screen links on the mobile site.
Having a canonical tag point to the main page of the site would be highly counter productive. You’d be telling Google to only index the home page and not other pages on the mobile site.[/QUOTE]
Even if some of the content is the same?
Say it’s a page that lists the 20 most popular gay stories, the same page would exists on both mobile and full version of the site only with some smaller differences (less code, navigation etc).
Re: Would you use “canonical” link on Mobile Site?
[QUOTE=gaydemon;87754]Even if some of the content is the same?
Say it’s a page that lists the 20 most popular gay stories, the same page would exists on both mobile and full version of the site only with some smaller differences (less code, navigation etc).[/QUOTE]
Yup. <link rel=“alternative” is exactly for that purpose - same content for a different device. The canonical tag is saying “don’t index this, index that…”
But also realize that devices like the iPhone don’t automatically pull the mobile version of the page the way older devices did. You still need Javascript to do that.
From what I’ve heard the canonical tag has been a big headache for Google - so many people have used it incorrectly that it’s caused a lot of problems and huge sections of major sites have been deindexed because of it.
My other gut reaction was to submit a mobile sitemap (or add mobile-designated URLs to a regular sitemap), BUT in looking at the docs it seems “mobile” to Google is old-style, pre-iPhone/Android type pages (WAP, etc.) So mobile sitemaps are a thing of the past. Too bad - I think they have just as much relevance now than they did back then…
Re: Would you use “canonical” link on Mobile Site?
Right… still not sure about it. I do understand the rel=alternative, but knowing how shit Google can be at understand what’s what, it worries me to put up two sites with identical content, even if they are designed for different devices.