Two pages, the same topic, different texts - use canonical?

[piernik]

I have travel site that has two parts
1. Subdomain (www.) with attraction descriptions
2. Blog subdomain (blog.) with our travels

Lat's say we go to new amusement park. Afterwards we produce two texts - one for www. and one for blog. those are two different texts.
Blog posts are more personal than for www. and shared in social channels.

My concern is what google takes for ranking. Most time (not always) it takes www. version, but wonder if blog alternative has no negative impact on www ranking? I have links from blog to www - not opposite.

Can I use canonical tag in blog version that points to www ? As I said both text are not the same. Maybe it will make google ignore blog version?

[topr8]

the canonical tag is for pages that are the same.

in your case the pages have different text/content

so in my opinion do NOT use the canonical tag

[not2easy]

Maybe it will make google ignore blog version?

Pushing down the success of one part of your site does not increase the success of other parts of your site. The more you try to manipulate google's actions, the less they appreciate what you do for your visitors. If your users value their time on your site, google notices that.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I concur, do not use the canonical if they aren't the same.

Instead - hop on your site's search console and look up each URL. Perhaps you can find Google perceived differences between the two pages and their associated keywords and enhance the pages accordingly to differentiate them further.

What you call "the same" is very nuanced to Google because it's querry dependent..

Example: If you have two pages discussing how to paint a room green and blue Google may find one a better result for green related queries and the other for blue.

Another option if one of the two receives no traffic is to merge them and 301 to the version that does get traffic or delete one completely, it's OK to have 404 error pages, just make sure they don't have backlinks or internal links pointed at them.

[frankleeceo]

instead of asking if they are the same, why not optimize them for different keywords & intent. That's the better focus & approach.

[piernik]

Thanks everyone for Your help!

[bellagenesis]

Using the canonical if they aren't the same is a good rule of thumb. Instead, go to the search console of your website and check out each URL. Maybe there are variances in how Google sees the two sites and their related keywords that you can use to make the pages stand out even more. One page on how to paint a room green may rank higher in Google than the other for green-related searches, and vice versa.

[tangor]

@bellagenesis .... Welcome to Webmasterworld!