Can canonical links and noindex be used with iframes?

Question

We have implemented canonical links to our website in order to prevent the indexation of parameters.

Some of the pages are also used as iframes. From the the little info I could find on 'iframes and canonical links' online, I concluded that the iframe itself does not have to include a canonical link. Is this correct?

Also, we implement canonical link as a standard part of the every page that is created. But there is also the possibility to set a page to 'noindex'. Online I find very contracting opinions on this. Some stating that these two are two completely different 'commands' for search engines and others saying that they are contradicting ones.

Does anybody have any advise on these two points?

Answer 1

iFrames are usually not indexed by Google. They don't make good landing pages because they are generally designed to be part of a larger page. As such, canonical tags are less necessary there than they are on other pages. However, even an iFrame could have a "preferred" URL. It would be completely appropriate to use a canonical tag on an iFrame page.

Noindex tags are used when you don't want the page in the search result. Canonical tags are for telling search engines the preferred URL. If both exist on a page, the noindex tag is more powerful and the page will not be indexed.