Google ignoring Canonical and choosing its own
-
Hey Mozzers,
We have several products that all have upto 6 different versions, they are the same product but in a different specification. As users search via these specifications (within our website) it is beneficial to keep all 6 products as different listings on the website. In google however it is not.
So we kept all 6 listing but chose 1 to be the google landing page, the only different between them all is the technical specification + occasionally size. But 95% of the pages are the same.
Let call the products A, B, C, D, E, F, we made all the canonicals point to C because this is out best selling version of the product. However, google has chosen E to rank instead.
What is my best move here? Should i accept the page google has chosen and change the canonicals the point to that version or should I be stubborn and try to get google to change which version it ranks.
As always many thanks.
-
It's important to remember that Google in general takes canonical tags as more of a suggestion than a rule; they may decide that another page deserves to rank instead. Take a look at the version of the page that ranks: does it have more external or internal links pointing to it? You may be able to build up your canonical page by directing some additional link juice that way.
If it's all the same to you which version ranks, it might be easier to just take the hint and make the ranking page the canonical page; otherwise, it may take some time to build up those off-page signals to get that version to rank.
-
hmmm.. Interesting. Three weeks should be enough time.
The only thing I can think of is a mistake somewhere in your canonical tags. Let's see what other MOZers have to say about this.
-
Hey Dmitrii,
They all seem to be set up correctly. No mistakes mentioned in the article are present.
I've given it about 3 weeks so far, which may or may not be long enough i suppose
-
Hi there.
Have you read this? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
That might answer some of your questions.
Now, did you allow some time for Google to "realize" canonical links after you made them live?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Canonical Issue On AMP
Hi everyone,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MuhammadQasimAttari
I have one issue about canonical. kindly guide me about it. I have a site example.com/abc and I convert it on an amp and know its URLs is example.com/abc=?amp. but the search console tells me to add the proper canonical URL but both pages are the same. kindly guide me about it. what will I do?0 -
Google does not want to index my page
I have a site that is hundreds of page indexed on Google. But there is a page that I put in the footer section that Google seems does not like and are not indexing that page. I've tried submitting it to their index through google webmaster and it will appear on Google index but then after a few days it's gone again. Before that page had canonical meta to another page, but it is removed now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | odihost0 -
Html language deprecated by Google?
Hi Mates, Currently we are using on our site two tags for language (we are targeting english ) .... and these are defined on the head section, my question is it is required by Google in order to rank well or it is deprecated. Thank you Claudio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClayRey0 -
Canonicals question ref canonicals pointing to redundant urls
Hi, SCENARIO: A site has say 3 examples of the same product page but with different urls because that product fits into 3 different categories e.g. /tools/hammer /handtools/hammer /specialoffers/hammer and lets say the first 2 of those have the canonical pointing to /specialoffers/hammer YET that page is now redundant e.g. the webmaster decided to do away with the /specialoffers/ folder. ASSUMPTIONS: That is going to seriously hamper the chances of the 2 remaining versions of the hammer page being able to rank as they have canonicals pointing to a url that no longer exists. The canonical tags should be changed to point to 1 of the remaining url versions. As an added complication - lets say /specialoffers/hammer still exists, the url works, but just isn't navigable from the site. Thoughts/feedback welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Canonical code set up correctly?
Please let me know if this makes sense. I have a very limited knowledge of technical SEO but I am almost positive that my web developer did something wrong. I have a wordpress blog and he did add canonical code to some of the pages. However he directs the site to the same URL! Does this mean that the canonical code is setup incorrectly and actually harming my SEO performance. Also if I have one webpage with just the first paragraph of a blog post I wrote and a completely seperate page for the blog post itself, could this be considered duplicate content? Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DR700950 -
How to know if your site has been penalized by Google
Hello, One of my clients ranking drop dramatically.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ogdcorp
We believe it was due to an upgrade to his site. While the site was live www.clientdomain.com
Work was being done on the new site www.clientdomain.com/new (1 month) I think google crawled the /new link and took as a content duplication since both sites had the same content. Is there a MOZ tool to see if a site has been penalized or any online tool? Thanks0 -
Google Places Multiple Location
Hi everyone, I have a client with multiple locations in the same city. I would like to have their Goolge places listing show up under the main website listing. Currently, one of the Google places listings in being pulled in directly below the main website but not the other. The Zagat rating is being pulled in as well. I would like to have both locations show up when you type in the name of the business. Any ideas how to do this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SixTwoInteractive0 -
So What On My Site Is Breaking The Google Guidelines?
I have a site that I'm trying to rank for the Keyword "Jigsaw Puzzles" I was originally ranked around #60 or something around there and then all of a sudden my site stopped ranking for that keyword. (My other keyword rankings stayed) Contacted Google via the site reconsideration and got the general response... So I went through and deleted as many links as I could find that I thought Google may not have liked... heck, I even removed links that I don't think I should have JUST so I could have this fixed. I responded with a list of all links I removed and also any links that I've tried to remove, but couldn't for whatever reasons. They are STILL saying my website is breaking the Google guidelines... mainly around links. Can anyone take a peek at my site and see if there's anything on the site that may be breaking the guidelines? (because I can't) Website in question: http://www.yourjigsawpuzzles.co.uk UPDATE: Just to let everyone know that after multiple reconsideration requests, this penalty has been removed. They stated it was a manual penalty. I tried removing numerous different types of links but they kept saying no, it's still breaking rules. It wasn't until I removed some website directory links that they removed this manual penalty. Thought it would be interesting for some of you guys.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardTaylor0