If I have a catalog page with 36 products and I break it down by paging with 12 products per page. There are links to switch it to show all or show 12,24,36 products per page. Default is show 12 products. If the show 24 products is clicked the link will have a parameter (Ex. LINK?size=24)
Right now the canonical tag is pointing to the page without any parameters. Will Google not see the other 24 products? Should I point my canonical tag to the "all" products parameter? Is there any problems with having parameter tags in the canonical tag? This is not possible to do. Canonical tags can "hint" to the search engines what the correct page is as a whole if you have duplicate versions however you can't hint to the search engines what page you want to appear for a keyword, it wouldn't make sense for this to ever work as the search engines job is to display the most relevant result to the user, so if the page you want ranking is not appearing it means its not deemed as relevant and so more work needs doing to fix this (add content, build links etc.).
If you want both pages to remain (i.e. both stay live and no redirects are put in place) you would;d need to optimise the desired page for the desired keyword. I would:
Take content from the page ranking for the keyword and add to page you want to rank
Look through back-links for the ranking page and send emails requesting the link change to the new destination page
Build new links for the keyword to the page you want to rank But it's the same page. For usability the paging hides the last 24 products, making it easier for a customer to browse though products. Same URL except it's has parameters at the end.
Link <---canonical pointing to it (default 12 products, page 1)
Link?size=all <---all products (if chosen by user)
Link?size=24&page=1 <---first page of products broken into 24 a page (if chosen by user or other options)
I'm just wondering if Google won't look at the other products past 12 since my canonical tag is pointing to a default 12 product page. Or should I point to the Link?size=all ? The whole purpose of a canonical tag is to pass the link love of the duplicate URLs to the main page. As you have implemented the canonical tag to the main page and not the ?bla_bla URL it is fine.
You do not have to worry about anything. What you have done is alright. I would advise you keep your preferred URLs which are diplaying 12 products per page.
According to me if you are choosing page with all products, it will appear in the search results. Pages with more number of product will take more time to load. So, for delivering best user experience, choose the pages with 12 products as your preferred URL. I think I just found the answer to my question
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html
So I should be pointing the canonical tag to the "view all" option or make the default the blah.htm (no parameters) page the view all. One of my co-workers commented that for page speed/usability the 12 products per page would be better. Still pretty torn on where I should point that canonical tag.
Right now the canonical tag is pointing to the page without any parameters. Will Google not see the other 24 products? Should I point my canonical tag to the "all" products parameter? Is there any problems with having parameter tags in the canonical tag? This is not possible to do. Canonical tags can "hint" to the search engines what the correct page is as a whole if you have duplicate versions however you can't hint to the search engines what page you want to appear for a keyword, it wouldn't make sense for this to ever work as the search engines job is to display the most relevant result to the user, so if the page you want ranking is not appearing it means its not deemed as relevant and so more work needs doing to fix this (add content, build links etc.).
If you want both pages to remain (i.e. both stay live and no redirects are put in place) you would;d need to optimise the desired page for the desired keyword. I would:
Take content from the page ranking for the keyword and add to page you want to rank
Look through back-links for the ranking page and send emails requesting the link change to the new destination page
Build new links for the keyword to the page you want to rank But it's the same page. For usability the paging hides the last 24 products, making it easier for a customer to browse though products. Same URL except it's has parameters at the end.
Link <---canonical pointing to it (default 12 products, page 1)
Link?size=all <---all products (if chosen by user)
Link?size=24&page=1 <---first page of products broken into 24 a page (if chosen by user or other options)
I'm just wondering if Google won't look at the other products past 12 since my canonical tag is pointing to a default 12 product page. Or should I point to the Link?size=all ? The whole purpose of a canonical tag is to pass the link love of the duplicate URLs to the main page. As you have implemented the canonical tag to the main page and not the ?bla_bla URL it is fine.
You do not have to worry about anything. What you have done is alright. I would advise you keep your preferred URLs which are diplaying 12 products per page.
According to me if you are choosing page with all products, it will appear in the search results. Pages with more number of product will take more time to load. So, for delivering best user experience, choose the pages with 12 products as your preferred URL. I think I just found the answer to my question
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html
So I should be pointing the canonical tag to the "view all" option or make the default the blah.htm (no parameters) page the view all. One of my co-workers commented that for page speed/usability the 12 products per page would be better. Still pretty torn on where I should point that canonical tag.