Dawn Anderson, a really awesome SEO who thinks hard in most of what she does and says, posted an interesting chart, which we can name the Google Directive Chart. She posted this on Twitter with the caveat of saying "I appreciate that this will be case-dependent but would this make sense?"
The chart tries to describe the level of directive Google takes from a specific signal. Here it is:
It is well worth reading through the whole Twitter conversation, as you can see what Dawn is getting at by putting this together.
Here is how John Mueller responded to this chart, which fits with Dawn's caveat anyway:
IMO that chart is misleading - it's not that one trumps the other, it's that these signals should be in unison.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) June 13, 2017
If you give conflicting canonicalization signals, we will have to make a guess. If you see it, just fix it so that we don't have to guess.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) June 13, 2017
Either way, this is an interesting way to look at it, given Google's feedback.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update:
I amended this in light of Mr Mu's @JohnMu comment re unison. There is a thread that also included https and alignment of all in there :) pic.twitter.com/HHaNtT9t0b
— Dawn Anderson (@dawnieando) June 19, 2017
