Google ignoring Canonical and choosing its own

[ATP]

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.

[RuthBurrReedy]

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.

[DmitriiK]

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.

[ATP]

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

[DmitriiK]

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?