I’m wondering if there’s a way to remove canonical links entirely from a Discourse forum. I’m referring to the /2, /3, /4, etc extensions that show up for each topic URL as a user scrolls down the page. I would like to have every reply within a topic simply refer to the original URL (not redirectin…

[image] RGJ: [image] SethWilliams: over 30,000 low-quality URLs were added to our sitemap over the course of 12 months Are you sure about this? I have never seen a post number in a site map. Thanks for questioning this. “Sitemap” was probably the wrong word to use. What I meant was tha…

[image] SethWilliams: If these numbers simply weren’t added to every single reply, Google would only be able to see the original post URL. Yeah, and if Google would be honoring those rel="canonical" meta tags (which they invented!) that were put in there specifically to prevent Google from do…

Sounds good. It would be ideal if it’s off by default, because it’s not inconceivable that it could cause topic pages to disappear from Google or other search engines. I’m not sure if it was already mentioned, but another way to fix it without noindex might be to use URL fragments for the posts, si…

[image] j127: I’m not sure if it was already mentioned, but another way to fix it without noindex might be to use URL fragments for the posts, since those shouldn’t get counted as separate pages. Thanks for the suggestion. I’d like to think that would work… but seeing as how the original “cor…

[image] SethWilliams: but seeing as how the original “correct” method isn’t even working, it makes me skeptical that anything will solve the problem other than just eliminating the numbered replies altogether. That would remove the ability to link to specific posts though. There would be no w…

[image] j127: That would remove the ability to link to specific posts though. There would be no way to link to post #789 in a 1,000-post topic, and it would be annoying for users to have to scroll that far. It could be slightly more annoying, but if the page=2, page=3, etc URLs still work (wh…

[image] j127: they should probably be the same, because the pages are otherwise almost identical. No, /8 is not the same as the topic. /8 points to the 8th post and the timestamp corresponds to that of the 8th post. If you compare the ?page=2 variant to the actual post it links to then you w…

[image] SethWilliams: Accounting for the dates and times of each post and reply is sort of an integral part of how forums work. I’m not saying to remove time information, but just that it would be better to only send the machine-readable timestamp for the top post. From the perspective of ran…

[image] j127: I’m not saying to remove time information, but just that it would be better to only send the machine-readable timestamp for the top post. From the perspective of ranking a page in search results, a forum topic is basically an article (top post) with a bunch of comments on it. It do…

Removing the /2, /3, /4, etc links for each reply within a topic URL

Development

Falco (Falco) November 25, 2021, 9:26pm 24

This is in. If you want to enable this experimental feature, you need to flip the value to the hidden site setting SiteSetting.allow_indexing_non_canonical_urls.

Please share the results with us.

Topic		Replies	Views
Search engines now blocked from indexing non-canonical pages Announcements seo	23	4779	March 15, 2022
Sitelinks in Google disappearing Community Building	26	1768	January 27, 2023
Why isn't Google Indexing Discourse? SEO concerns Support seo	31	6264	June 1, 2024
Adding Canonical Redirects for SEO Optimization Support	23	7655	October 1, 2015
Pagination URL scheme not passed through when topic is renamed Feature	21	4295	May 20, 2015

Removing the /2, /3, /4, etc links for each reply within a topic URL

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