Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical
-
Hi all,
A number of our pages have dropped out of search rankings.
It seems they are being marked as "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical"
However, the page Google is choosing as the canonical is totally different - different headings, titles, metadata, content on the page.
We are completely mystified as to why this is happening. If anyone can shed any light, it would be hugely appreciated!
Example URL is this one:
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/londonWhich Google seems to think is a duplicate of this: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/solicitor/london
-
Hi Eric. I took a look at your two pages. When I look at the page source (not with "inspect", but with "view page source"), I see that all of the content on your page is injected via javascript. There is almost no html for the page. To me, this looks like for whatever reason, Google isn't able to execute and parse the content being injected by javascript, and so when it crawls just the html, it is seeing the two pages as duplicate because the body of the content (in html page source) is mostly identical.
That does raise a question of why Google isn't able to parse the content of the scripts. Historically, Google just didn't execute the scripts. Now it does, but they acknowledge that content injected by scripts may not always ben indexed. As well, if scripts take too long to execute for the bot, then again, the content may not be indexed.
My recommendation would be to find some ways to have some unique html per page (not just the script content).
-
Hi Eric,
You can try to add unique content to each page and request reindexing via GSC.
-
Hi Eric,
This could be a different problem than just your canonical URL pointing to be something different, which is different from your HEAD canonical tag on these pages. What type of keywords are you checking this against, because that actually drives more input into what Google is seeing as a better version?
Martijn.
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
-
ViewState and Duplicate Content
Our site keeps getting duplicated content flagged as an issue... however, the pages being grouped together have very little in common on-page. One area which does seem to recur across them is the ViewState. There's a minimum of 150 lines across the ones we've investigated. Could this be causing the reports?
Technical SEO | | RobLev0 -
Duplicated content & url's for e-commerce website
Hi, I have an e-commerce site where I sell greeting cards. Products are under different categories (birthday, Christmas etc) with subcategories (for Mother, for Sister etc) and same product can be under 3 or 6 subcategories, for example: url: .../greeting-cards/Christmas/product1/for-mother
Technical SEO | | jurginga
url:.../greeting-cards/Christmas/product1/for-sister
etc On the CMS I have one description record per each card (product1) with multiple subcategories attached that naturally creates URLs for subcategories. Moz system (and Google for sure) picks these urls (and content) as duplicated.
Any ideas how to solve this problem?
Thank you very much!0 -
Rel= Canonical
Almost every one of my product has this message: Rel Canonical (Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical. ) What is the best way to correct this?
Technical SEO | | tiffany11030 -
Duplicate content question...
I have a high duplicate content issue on my website. However, I'm not sure how to handle or fix this issue. I have 2 different URLs landing to the same page content. http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/vegan/ and http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/raw-food/ .In this situation, I cannot redirect one URL to the other since in the future I will probably be adding additional posts to either the "vegan" tag or the "raw food tag". What is the solution in this case? Thank you
Technical SEO | | myfitstation0 -
URL Understanding -
Hello everyone! Can anyone help me understanding this url? Product.asp?PID=1236 cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Magento Canonical Tags
Magento pages have been giving me a lot of trouble with the canonical tags. In some cases duplicate pages are showing up, so I need to add the canonical tag. In other cases I'm getting an error that there are multiple canonical tags per page. How can I get my pages canonized without duplicate tags? It seems like it's either too much or not enough, no matter what I do. Note: this only applies to category and product pages.
Technical SEO | | GravitateOnline0 -
Why do I get duplicate pages, website referencing the capital version of the url vs the lowercase www.agi-automation.com/Pneumatic-grippers.htm
Can I the rel=canonical tag this? http://www.agi-automation.com/Pneumatic-grippers.htm****http://www.agi-automation.com/pneumatic-grippers.htm
Technical SEO | | AGIAutomation0