What could cause Google to not honor canonical URLs?
-
I have a strange situation on a website, when I do a Google query of site:example.com all the top indexed results appear to be queries that users can perform on the website. So any random term the user searches for on the website for some reason is causing the search result page to get indexed - like example.com/search/query/random-keywords
However, the search results page has a canonical tag on it that points to example.com/search, but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. Any thoughts or ideas why this could be happening?
-
Hi there,
First of all, its a mistake to think that when searching with _site: _operator, the first results are the most important nor the more relevant. Google has said a few times that we shouldn't rely that much on what that search in terms of what's being shown.
Blocking search results with robots.txt wont be of help, as it will not remove already indexed pages and cant prevent for new pages to be indexed (if there's an external link to a robots.txt blocked page, google can still index it) it'll only prevent Googlebot from discovering new ones FROM YOUR SITE.
Again, i'd try to dig deeper to understand where are the links to internal searches that google is finding. Googlebot will not do any search in your site.
The thing with GSC, might be related to quite a few reasons. I cant say much because I don't know any more specifics, but from what you are telling me it looks like you are getting impressions in searches that you don't relate to your site and that land on pages that google is noindexing. Yeah im repeating the obvious, hehe.
In my experience, Google can have these strange behaviours. You know, there are cases when a page is canonicalized, but it can still be shown in SERPS. Dont ask me why, but it happens. It takes a little time to google fully replace it with the correct one.
I'd wait a little longer to see how Google is handling them.I don't know if im helping you.
it kinda took me a few minutes to understand/process what you wrote and come up with an answer.Please, feel free ask again or comment on my reply if I misunderstood something.
Best luck,
Gaston -
Hi here's some more background info on this situation that makes it even stranger. I can perform some pretty specific searches on Google where these indexed search result pages show up. And I can look in Google Search Console under the performance section and see that those pages receive impressions and clicks. However, if I inspect the URL, Search Console says it is not included in Google's index, and the reason it gives under indexing is because it says it is honoring the canonical URL. So search console is saying it isn't indexed because of the canonical, but I can do searches and find that exact URL in the index. Any ideas what this could be from?
-
Hi Gaston,
Thanks for the response. I can confirm that the example, /search and /search?q=foo are pretty much identical. However that may not always be the case, only when a user searches for something that would return no results. So, a website that sells widgets, /search and /search?q=widgets would not be identical, and in that case it would make sense that Google would not honor the canonical link. What's really strange is if I search google for the site: operator of the domain, the top pages are not user queries for things that make sense. The top indexed pages are random, non-relevant user searches.
I do not have a way with this system to control noindex tags on these search result pages. The only thing I could do is take the nuclear option and just block it all with robots.txt using wildcards. But that means no search result pages would get indexed, relevant or not.
-
Hi there,
in my experience, when google doesn't honor Canonicals, is because pages arent similar.
In its definition, canonical are there for two or more pages that have the same content.If you are finding it problematic, i'd suggest to use noindex tags for that search pages.
I'd investigate If there are links pointing to those internal search pages, as its not common for google to discover search pages.Hope it helps,
Best luck.
Gaston
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does using a canonical with ?utm_source=gmb cause any issues?
All of our URLs in Google My Business are tagged with ?utm_source=gmb. This way when people click on it within a Google Map listing, knowledge graph, etc we know it came from there. I'm assuming using a canonical on all ?_utm_source _pages (we have others, including some in the index) won't cause any problems with this, correct? Since they're not technically traditional organic SERPs? Dumb question I know, but better safe than sorry. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Alces1 -
Google Appending Blog URL inbetween my homepage and product page is it issue with base url?
Hi All, Google Appending Blog URL inbetween my homepage and product page. Is it issue or base url or relative url? Can you pls guide me? Looking to both tiny url you will get my point what i am saying. Please help Thanks!
Technical SEO | | amu1230 -
Problems with canonical urls / redirect (magento webshop)
Hi all, We're running a Magento webshop and we discover some strangs things regarding canonical urls and redirects after using the Amasty improved navigation extension. To clarify, please check these four urls. They contain the same content (the same product page). https://www.afwerkingshop.be/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gipsplaten/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gipsplaten/standaard/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html All these four pages have different canoncials (the page url). Obviously, that's not good. However, in Google (site:...) url (1) is the only one that's indexed. Thereby, if I visit the productpage by first going to a category page (fe. www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden.html), I'm redirected to url (1), but the canonical url is www.afwerkingshop.be/last_visited_category_name/product. So, the canonical seems dynamic depending on the last visited category. And still, only url (1) is indexed. Additionally, all aforementioned pages contain . Is anyone familiar with this issue? And more important, will it cause problems in future? Thanks in advance. Kind regards, Chendon
Technical SEO | | RBijsterveld0 -
URL structure
Hello Guys, Quick Question regarding URL strucutre One of our client is an hotel chain, thye have a group site www.example.com and each property is located in a subfolder: www.example.com/example-boston.html , www.example.com/example-ny.html etc. My quesion is : where is better to place the language extension at a subfolder level?
Technical SEO | | travelclickseo
Should i go for www.example.com/en/example-ny.html or it is preferable to specify the language after the property name www.example.com/example-ny/en/accommodation.html? Thanks and Regards, Alessio0 -
URL Structure
Hi, Hope you are all well. On our website we have a 'blog' and a 'news' section. The blog is located on "/blog" - but when you click on a post the url structure changes to /name-of-article and the blog subdomain isn't included. Would it be better to have "blog/name-of-article as this would then make the blog perform better in search results? Also, if our news page is under /news - but when you click on an article it changes to /news-article/name-of-article Wouldn't it be better to have /news/name-of-article Thanks a lot!! 🙂
Technical SEO | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Canonicals being ignored
Hi, I've got a site that I'm working with that has 2 ways of viewing the same page - a property details page. Basically one version if the long version: /property/Edinburgh/Southside-Newington/6CN99V and the other just the short version with the code only on the end: /6cn99v There is a canonical in place from the short version to the long version, and the sitemap.xml only lists the long version HOWEVER - Google is indexing the short version in the majority of cases (not all but the majority). http://www.website.com/property/Edinburgh/Southside-Newington/6CN99V"> Obviously "www.website.com" contains the URL of the site itself. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | squarecat.ben0 -
URL rewriting causing problems
Hi I am having problems with my URL rewriting to create seo friendly / user friendly URL's. I hope you follow me as I try to explain what is happening... Since the creation of my rewrite rule I am getting lots of errors in my SEOMOZ report and Google WMT reports due to duplicate content, titles, description etc For example for a product detail, it takes the page and instead of a URL parameter it creates a user friendly url of mydomain.com/games-playstation-vita-psp/B0054QAS However in the google index there is also the following friendly URL which is the same page - which I would like to remove domain.com/games-playstation-vita/B0054QAS The key to the rewrite on the above URLs is the /B0054QAS appended at the end - this tells the script which product to load, the details preceeding this could be in effect rubbish i.e. domain.com/a-load-of-rubbish/B0054QAS and it would still bring back the same page as above. What is the best way of resolving the duplicate URLs that are currently in the google index which is causing problems The same issue is causing a quite serious a 5XX error on one of the generated URLs http://www.mydomain.com/retailersname/1 - , if I click on the link the link does work - it takes you to the retailers site, but again it is the number appended at the end that is the key - the retailersname is just there for user friendly search reasons How can I block this or remove it from the results? Hope you are still with me and can shed some light on these issues please. Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
URL rewrite question
I have adjusted a setting in my CMS and the URL's have changed from http://www.ensorbuilding.com/section.php/43/1/firestone-epdm-rubbercover-flat-roofing to http://www.ensorbuilding.com/section/43/1/firestone-epdm-rubbercover-flat-roofing This has changed all the URL's on the website not just this example. As you can see , the .php extension has now been removed but people can still access the .php version of the page. What I want is a site-wide 301 redirect but can not figure out how to implement it? Any help is appreciated 🙂 Thanks
Technical SEO | | danielmckay70