about Canonical URLs

I am not good at it. I mean I do not know what is the right way. So you people decide how and I'll just do what you decide.

thanks very much for open and honest and cooperative reply :D

This stuff is not my speciality either, and I'm not any kind of specialist with cobalt!

But imho I dont think its correct to put a different canonical tag on the same content, which is what seems to be happening.

I can see at least 2 possible options:

1) provide a user configurable option to select the 'main' category

2) let the system consistently choose 1 category as 'main' - lowest alpha sort, highest id or whatever

and then maybe set canonical based on both: if(not option1) option2

I havent done anything with cobalt user categories yet - how does that work?

bump...

looking for some input on this please

anyone...

the way of cobalt use canonical is not wrong for some projetcs (real estate, jobboard, etc) but in your case yes, so maybe an integration with CMS PLUGIN http://www.cmsplugin.com/products/components/4-canonical-url will do the job (they have k2, flexicontent, etc integration)

Hi Clowride

thanks for response.

and thanks for pointer to the plugin: but cobalt is so flexible and adaptable that I'm kind of hoping I can get it to do what I want without strapping external code onto it.

I wonder if you could explain how you meant cobalt canonical url is not wrong (and presumably therefore correct?) for real estate or jobboard?

... but cobalt is so flexible and adaptable that I'm kind of hoping I can get it to do what I want without strapping external code onto it.

i agree

... but cobalt is so flexible and adaptable that I'm kind of hoping I can get it to do what I want without strapping external code onto it.

I wonder if you could explain how you meant cobalt canonical url is not wrong (and presumably therefore correct?) for real estate or jobboard?

canonical url is good to prevent duplicate content, 1 records with several urls

for joboard and real estate / classifieds ads each record may have same url (if no number, no id (bad for seo), same title

to be clear my classified ads website built with cobalt has very great ranking with current version

do you allow an ad in more than 1 category?

sometimes yes and i have no problem

sorry to ask more questions, but I am still trying to understand this:

So where you have a ad/record in more than one category, does cobalt set a different canonical url to the same content (ad/record) when its viewed in a different category?

@Sackgesicht: from what I see here you must have a lot of experience with cobalt, can I ask if you see this as a 'problem'

I am following....

I am following....

yes thank you.

But obviously not a lot of other interest in it, and that surprises me some. It is very important that each record should have 1 and only 1 canonical url. Otherwise to set a different canonical to what is essentially the same content is the seo equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.

here's a link to what google thinks about it:

About rel="canonical"

I'm on the road for a few days, but I'll come back to it later.

in fact if you have many records with very similar content, you tell this one in my favorite and index

Hi clowride

You are quite correct.

But the problem is that cobalt isnt doing that.

If you look at the urls in my first post you'll see its the same record (13547-test-listing-acedg - so very similar content) in 5 different categories.

And cobalt is setting a different canonical url for the same content in each different category.

And thats a problem.

Cobalt needs some means to say "this one is my favourite, index it"

Following, too ;-)

If the content on each of those pages you listed is the same, then you will end up with duplicate content problems in google index.

So any article with multiple entry points (search/categories etc) must have a favorite permalink used as the canonical link.

The real issue, is how to allow content authors to decide the permalink.

A couple of suggestions..

1. Allow the user to 'prioritise' Categories and use that to create permalinks

2. Create a 'generic' Category and use that on any record with more than one entrypoint.

Cheers,

Pete