Canonical URL's - Fixed but still negatively impacted
-
I recently noticed that our canonical url's were not set up correctly. The incorrect setup predates me but it could have been in place for close to a year, maybe a bit more. Each of the url's had a "sortby" parameter on all of them. I had our platform provider make the fix and now everything is as it should be.
I do see issues caused by this in Google Webmaster, for instance in the HTML suggestions it's telling me that pages have duplicate title tags when in fact this is the same page but with a variety of url parameters at the end of the url. To me this just highlights that there is a problem and we are being negatively impacted by the previous implementation.
My question is has anyone been in this situation? Is there any way to flush this out or push Google to relook at this? Or is this a sit and be patient situation.
I'm also slightly curious if Google will at some point look and see that the canonical urls were changed and then throw up a red flag even though they are finally the way they should be.
Any feedback is appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave -
In the past i have seen conanicals take up to 5-6 weeks. My only other advice is to monitor the amount of indexed queries you have in Google. If you know you started with 100+ and over the past three weeks it has dropped down to 50, then it is slowly taking affect (once again, using the site search). If you see the opposite and you notice no change, then perhaps the tag is still incorrect or some other issue?
I can't promise that all of the queried URLs will become un-indexed but the most important thing is the base page ranks the highest when searching.
-
Hi Kyle
Thanks for the response. That is a good point regarding the site:www.... search and in fact all of the results used the correct canonical url with the cached versions showing the same corrected format. The last time the sitemap was downloaded was yesterday so maybe my concern shouldn't be that great. What I'm seeing in webmaster tools does include some of the older content with the parameters but if the SERP's are showing updated versions then maybe that will be flushed out. I am just under the impression that if its in Google Webmaster then its part of Googles overall point of view of your site.
The canonical url updates have been fixed for about 3 weeks.
-
First i would check to see if the update you made to the pages have been recognized by Google. You can do this simply by doing a "site:www.domain.com" search, then view the cached page. If you find that it has not been recognized, you can always resubmit a new xml sitemap to your webmaster tools. In the past i have seen this help speed up the process.
How long ago did you make these updates?
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
-
Onsite audit and fix issues
I am not sure if I am posting in the correct area here, but I am looking for someone I can hire to do an onsite audit and fix those issues. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Granitebusters0 -
Over Optimization and how to fix it
Hey Y'all, I had a question about over-optimization. So if I'm targeting "Social Security Lawyer Allen, TX" on the home page, then "SSDI Lawyer Allen, TX," on another page, could that be hurting my efforts on Google? Should I remove all of the efforts targeted toward Allen, TX on the other page, or should I maybe target like a different city?
On-Page Optimization | | Charles_Murdock0 -
Telling Google SERP's my correct currency.
Hi, I'm having a problem with Google SERP results showing my currency as USD, when it should be CAD. An example of a page with this problem is - http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/fgd400-sensaphone400-p/fgd400.htm - can anyone see where Google is getting USD from on there? I don't see it anywhere in the coding. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | absoauto0 -
Using phrases like 'NO 1' or 'Best' int he title tag
Hi All, Quick question - is it illegal, against any rule etc to use phrases such as 'The No 1 rest of the title tag | Brand Name' on a site?
On-Page Optimization | | Webrevolve0 -
Sold Products appear as duplicate pages 'Page Not Found' ???
Hi there, I'm down to just 6 duplicate page warnings but I'm not sure how to deal with this one: Information Page Not Found! http://www.vintageheirloom.com/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=6 My Ecommerce shopping site products are unique, 1 of a kind. So once one product has sold and been delivered we take the product off our website, hence the Information Page Not Found! As I understand when search engines re-index these warnings will drop off but new sold products would replace them. So redirecting seems like hard work and never ending. Is it ok to ignore these warnings? Thanks Mozzers..
On-Page Optimization | | well-its-1-louder0 -
Number ID's in URL's
If you have to place a number ID into a URL. Does it matter from an seo perspective whether it is placed in the middle or at the end? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | simmo2350 -
Temp redirects of homepage URLs
Working on a site for a client and the CMS provider has all variants of their domain (.co.uk & .com and / and http:// etc) temp redirecting to the /default.aspx homepage. I know in theory that this means no Google Juice is being passed to the final location page, does this mean that all backlinks that point to their domain are not actually passing Juice onto the homepage? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0 -
Many canonical warnings. Is this a problem?
My site has over 80 canonical warnings. The report states the url is for example http://www.musicliveuk.com and the 'tag value' column says http://www.musicliveuk.com/ Is that a good thing? I'm new to seo and am running my site on wordpress with all in one seo pack. Does this mean the seo pack has automatically added canonical tags to my pages? If so why is it showing as an error? I am also getting lots of 301 permanent redirects and I haven't set any up manually. I'm getting them for every page on my site from the normal url to a url with a slash at the end.
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0