"Google chose different canonical than user" Issue Can Anyone help?
-
Our site https://www.travelyaari.com/ , some page are showing this error ("Google chose different canonical than user") on google webmasters. status message "Excluded from search results".
Affected on our route page urls mainly. https://www.travelyaari.com/popular-routes-listing
Our canonical tags are fine, rel alternate tags are fine. Can anyone help us regarding why it is happening?
-
Hi Robin,
Nigel has offered some good advice here - the one thing I would also add is that you may want to set up mobile switchboard tags to make it clear to Google that the desktop version is the canonical version for PCs and the mobile version is canonical for mobile.
See more info here: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls#annotations-for-desktop-and-mobile-urls
-
Hi Robin
I have checked a few of those as well and the desktop version is coming up high in search for PC search and the m. for mobile.
Whilst it is true that Google can choose its own canonicals I think in your case both versions are being shown on the appropriate device and I think the only reason you are seeing the error is that on your mobile version you have the PC version tag as canonical so Google is quite rightly picking the m. - See screenshot
Despite what you are seeing it is not affecting your rankings.
I would also make all listings https as you are linking from a secure page to a lot of non-secure pages.
Regards
Nigel
-
Ah OK Robin you didn't make that clear - I'll have a look.
The stuff about title and description is still very valid.
Regards
Nigel
-
Hi, thank you. But the answer mentioned is not a sure shot.
Problem is not with this URL. The URLs listed inside this URL "https://www.travelyaari.com/popular-routes-listing" Kindly open it and find the lists.
Under new Google Search Console: Index Coverage> Not Indexed> Google chose different canonical than user>66k pages affected.
Those URLs are listed there as an issue. I need to know what is exactly "Google chose different canonical than user".
-
Hi Robin
You have two versions of the page, the desktop and mobile.
If you search from mobile the m. comes up
If you search from PC the desktop page comes up.So there really is no problem. It could just be that if someone is searching on mobile then the desktop version is set as the canonical and so Google has rightly chosen the m.
What is sure is that your search results are not being affected.
My advice though would be to change your title to '**Bus Routes In India - Route Directory | **Travelyaari'
This is because the title does not convey the full meaning. Your page would probably move much higher on the page with this title. And the description: "Get Indian Bus Schedules, timetables & information about bus routes in India. Get daily scheduled bus services & bookings on bus routes more than 20000+ - Travelyaari" Get those keywords in there!
I hope this helps
Regards Nigel
-
Hi,
Please check this old thread on the same (Ruth's reply).
https://moz.com/community/q/google-ignoring-canonical-and-choosing-its-own
Hope this helps!!
Thanks
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
-
Hacked Websites (Doorways) Ranking First Page of Google
Hello Moz community! I could really use your help with some suggestions here with some recent changes I've noticed in the Google serps for terms I've been currently working on. Currently one of the projects I am working on is for an online pharmacy and noticed that the SERPs are being now taken up by hacked websites which look like doorways to 301 redirect to an online pharmacy the hacker wants the traffic to go to. Seems like they may be wordpress sites that are hacked and have unrelated content on their websites compared to online pharmacies. We've submitted these issues as spam to Google and within chrome as well but haven't heard back. When searching terms like "Canadian Pharmacy Viagra" and other similar terms we see this issue. Any other recommendations on how we can fix this issue? Thanks for your time and attached is a screenshot of the results we are seeing for one of our searches. 1Orus
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | monarkg0 -
Help! Is this what is called "cloaking"?
Friend asked me to look at her website. Ran it through screaming frog and BAM, instead of 4 pages i was expecting it returned HUNDREDS. 99.9% of them are for cheap viagra and pharmaceuticals. I asked her if she was selling viagra, which is fine, I don't judge. But she swears she isn't. http://janeflahertyesq.com I ran it through google site:janeflahertyesq.com and sure enough, if you click on some of those, they take you to canadien pharmacys selling half priced blue pills. a) is this cloaking? if not, what is going on? b) more importantly, how do I we get rid of those hundreds of pages / de-indexed She's stumped and scared. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all in advance and for the work you do.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TeamPandoraBeauty0 -
More or Less pages helps in SEO?
Hi all, I have gone through some articles where less pages are suggested and they claim that they will be favoured by Google. I'm not sure as with limited pages, we can only target limited keywords. There might be threat from Google in-terms of doorway pages for more pages. But one of our competitor has many pages like dedicated page for every keyword. And their website ranks high and good for all keywords. I can see three pages created with differnet phrases for same on keyword. If less pages are good, how come this works for our competitor? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
I show different versions of the same page to the crawlers and users, but do not want to do anymore
Hello, While Google could not read JavaScript, I created two versions of the same page, one of them is for human and another is for Google. Now I do not want to serve different content to the search engine. But, I am worry if I will lose my traffic value. What is the best way to succeed it without loss? Can you help me?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kipra0 -
Question about "sneaky" vs. non-sneaky redirects?
One of my client's biggest keyword competitors is using, what I believe to be, sneaky redirects. The company is a large, international corporation that has a local office. They use a totally unrelated domain name for local press and advertising, but there is no website. The anchor text in the backlinks automatically redirects to the corporate website. Is this sneaky or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JCon7110 -
What is the difference between Positive Impact, No Impact, Negative Impact and Extremely Negative Impact in term of Google Update like panda or penguin etc.
What is the difference between Positive Impact, No Impact, Negative Impact and Extremely Negative Impact in term of Google Update like panda or penguin etc.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dotlineseo0 -
Banner Ads help seo?
I see in OSE banner ads counting ads as incoming links - My question is has anyone done a study showing a non tagged banner ad link and its effects on seo? Does google counting it as organic since it has no tagging or since its in a ad spot its ignored?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
Why did Google reject us from Google News?
I submitted our site, http://www.styleblueprint.com to Google to pontentially be a local news source in Nashville. I received the following note back: We reviewed your site and are unable to include it in Google News at this
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | styleblueprint
time. We have certain guidelines in place regarding the quality of sites
which are included in the Google News index. Please feel free to review
these guidelines at the following link: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3 Clicking the link, it anchors to the section that says: These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. etc... Now we have never intentionally tried to do anything deceptive for our rankings. I am new to SEOmoz and new to SEO optimization in general. I am working through the errors report on our campaign site but I cannot tell what they are dinging us for. Whatever it is we will be happy to fix it. All thoughts greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Jay0