Incorrect Canonical URLs?

[planetzu]

I was checking auto-generated canonical URLs for a thread that spans to 5 pages. This is what I found while checking the source code of the pages:

Canonical URL for Page 2:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://sitename.com/threads/topic.14/page-2" />

Canonical URL for Page 3:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://sitename.com/threads/topic.14/page-3" />

Canonical URL for Page 4:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://sitename.com/threads/topic.14/page-4" />

I could be wrong, but isn't it true that a Canocial URL is the main URL of the post? In which case, all Canonical URLs should point to "http://sitename.com/threads/topic.14/" and not to individual page URLs like http://sitename.com/threads/topic.14/page-2, page-3, page-4 etc.?

 

[planetzu]

Okay, I just realized that canonicals for individual URLs. So no worries. Thank you.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I think in this case, it would be good to have rel="prev" and rel="next"

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

 

[planetzu]

Thanks Mermaid, that's an excellent suggestion. But I am not sure how to include that in the forum as the article suggests that the first page should contain rel="next" and the 2nd page and other pages thereon should contain rel="prev" and rel="next".

So the rel="next" would need to be generated dynamically if the said thread were to have a 2nd page.

Do you have a PHP code that can achieve this?

 

[Mr Lucky]

I just had a look at the source code, and I believe this is already happening!

 

[planetzu]

lol I had no idea this was already there. Thank you for looking this up.