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
-
What to do with existing URL when replatforming and new URL is the same?
We are changing CMS from WordPress to Uberflip. If there is a URL that remains the same I believe we should not create a redirect. However, what happens to the old page? Should it be deleted?
Technical SEO | | maland0 -
Duplicate content w/ same URLs
I am getting high priority issues for our privacy & terms pages that have the same URL. Why would this show up as duplicate content? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RanvirGujral0 -
Category URL Pagination where URLs don't change between pages
Hello, I am working on an e-commerce site where there are categories with multiple pages. In order to avoid pagination issues I was thinking of using rel=next and rel=prev and cannonical tags. I noticed a site where the URL doesn't change between pages, so whether you're on page 1,2, or 3 of the same category, the URL doesn't change. Would this be a cleaner way of dealing with pagination?
Technical SEO | | whiteonlySEO0 -
Resolving duplication
example: i have a travel guide domain which will relate to 4 other rental sites (all different domains) if I want to post an article on the main site and as well on one of the other sites, how can this be done in order to not be considered duplicate content as it is authorised buy the author to be in both sites. Original author post on main site. Thanks for the advice in advance, Steve
Technical SEO | | AkilarOffice0 -
URL redirect question
Hi all, Just wondering whether anybody has experience of CMSs that do a double redirect and what affect that has on rankings. here's the example /page.htm is 301 redirected to /page.html which is 301 redirected to /page As Google has stated that 301 redirects pass on benefits to the new page, would a double redirect do the same? Looking forward to hearing your views.
Technical SEO | | A_Q0 -
Single URL not indexed
Hi everyone! Some days ago, I noticed that one of our URLs (http://www.access.de/karriereplanung/webinare) is no longer in the Google index. We never had any form of penalty, link warning etc. Our traffic by Google is constantly growing every month. This single page does not have an external link pointing to it - only internal links. The page has been indexed all the time. The HTTP status code is 200, there is no noindex or something in the code. I submitted the URL on GWMT to let Google send it to the index. It was crawled successfully by Google, sent to the index 5 days ago - nothing happened, still not indexed. Do you have any suggestions why this page is no longer indexed? It is well linked internally and one click away from the home page. There is still the PR of 5 showing, I always thought that pages with PR are indexed.......
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Rel=Canonical Help
The site in question is www.example.com/example. The client has added a rel=canonical tag to this page as . In other words, instead of putting the tag on the pages that are not to be canonical and pointing them to this one, they are doing it backwards and putting the same URL as the canonical one as the page they are putting the tag on. They have done this with thousands of pages. I know this is incorrect, but my question is, until the issue is resolved, are these tags hurting them at all just being there?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
Shorter URLs
Hi Is there a real value in having the keywords in the URL structure? we could use the URL: Mybrand.com/software/tablets/ipad/supertrader.html Or instead have the CMS create the shorter version mybrand.com/supertrader.html and just optimize this page for the keyword 'supertrader ipad software'
Technical SEO | | FXDD1