Canonicals being ignored

[squarecat.ben]

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?

[SharewarePros]

Hello,

The canonical looks fine, also you should be ensure your internal links which should point to the canonical version of your page, also the external links count (they should link to your canonical version).

Also you can include the robots clause on your short version as NOINDEX,FOLLOW.

It will resolve your problem

Hope it helps

Claudio

[squarecat.ben]

Thanks Wesley - I've PM'd you.

Agree that the structure is not perfect but that should work fine still - normally the link would be closed off with /> rather than the full

Also - I didn't mention that the long URL (the one I want to be ranked) did not contain a canonical - but I've asked dev to add this in anyway.

[WesleySmits]

Well, the link tag works a bit different than you are using it.

It should be:

http://www.website.com/property/Edinburgh/Southside-Newington/6CN99V">

Not ending in

Besides that it's difficult to see any other problems without having a look at the site. Could you provide me with the url here in the following format: domain (dot) com? or if you don't want to place it here you could send me a private message here on moz.