#4595 – Just canonical tags

Hi

Simply put, no. How can sh404SEF take control of Joomla created duplicates if we do not creates URLs ourselves? Putting canonical inside of pages is a last resort solution. You can do that with sh404SEF, but that's not how we fight duplicate content. We fight duplicate content in Joomla by making sure that no duplicate content is created in the first place: by not using menu items to create links.

So an article will always have the same URL regardless of how and where you link to it.

Rgds

Hi

Could you send me a link/article that explains this?

I am not aware of any. Aside from SEF extensions, specifically sh404SEF, nobody likes to talk about that ;)

This is a typical page of the site. If I remember well, the url comes from the menu item alias:

xxxx.com/children-greek.html



I thought this is the proper way to do it.

There's no "proper" way. If you use JOomla SEF URLs, then the links come from the menu items. If you use sh404SEF, the link comes from the category (optional)/article title.
As Joomla uses constantly an "Itemid" in its internal URls, and base the URls on it, the link to an article may depends on which page you linked from. For instance, linking an article from the home page may create a link such as /children-greek.html, but linking the article from a module on another page might take another menu item and get you another link.

It does not happen usually for simpler sites, but it starts happening for more complex site, with modules linking to recent or latest or most sold items or similar.

With sh404SEF, the link will always be the same: /category/article-title (in addition, the links are highly conifgurable).

Let me rephrase that then: what do you mean by "All I want is to control the canonical tag of they duplicate pages."? Which "duplicates pages" are you talking about?

Rgds

Hi

SOMEHOW google found these links. I don't know how. Google thinks (rightly) these are duplicate pages and therefore does not index them. However I have the feeling that google penalizes my site, therefore I want to use canonical tag or 301 redirects to fix this.

Those are non-sef URLs. You may have some links to them on your site which is weird, but I don't know.

I would then suggets you simply enable 301 redirect to SEF URL under the Advanced tab of sh404SEF configuration. Check that the redirect works on a few sample URLs and this won't be an issue anymore (be aware that the search console may take weeks before they update their display, if not months).

Rgds

Hi

It seems that the only url it is still not working is this one:

xxxx.com/contact-us.html?view=alfcontact

Well this is not a non-sef URL right, so it' s not supposed to work on that.

Please handle it however you like using the tools sh404SEF provides yo uwith:

1 - First ask yourself where did google find this link? then remove it when you find it.
2 - If not possible, add a canonical to /contact-us.html

Rgds