Canonical URL Google Proper Tag

  • Resolved C.Salzman

    (@csalzman)


    1 year, 8 months ago

    I received an email from Google for one of my client websites that had this subject:
    Google Search Console – Page indexing issues detected 
    Top Issue:
    – Alternate page with proper canonical tag

    My client uses the free Yoast SEO. Yoast’s website page about their Canonical URL’s says that those are automatically set when using the Yoast SEO plugin (is this true for the free version too?)

    I’m wondering then why Google would be sending that email. The website has been up for a few years now and using Yoast SEO the whole time, why would there be an issue all of a sudden? 

    • Did something change with either Yoast SEO or Google lately?
    • Should I manually insert the client’s full URL path in the Yoast Canonical URL field?
    • This topic was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by C.Salzman.
Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Plugin Support Suwash

    (@suascat_wp)

    @csalzman

    Can you confirm if those URLs being reported are /feed URLs? In that case, there’s no need to perform any other action.

    If the URLs showing are different, could you please show us some example URLs where the issue occurs so we can look at them?

    Thread Starter C.Salzman

    (@csalzman)

    Hi Suwash,
    Thanks for your reply.
    How can I check to know if it’s a “Feed” URL?

    Plugin Support Maybellyne

    (@maybellyne)

    The email should have a link to Google Search Console where the affected URL will be listed. Feed URLs usually have /feed/ as a suffix

    Thread Starter C.Salzman

    (@csalzman)

    Hi Maybellyne,

    Thanks for your reply.
    – The sufix is showing “feed” but only showing 2 urls – why is that? Suwash says it’s fine and not to worry about that but why only 2 urls?

    Also since I was in Google Search Console, I poked around some more and saw a whole list of things in the body of that page under “Why pages aren’t indexed”

    One listing Reason was: Page with redirect”

    Indexing > Pages > All Known Pages in that dropdown > clicked on Page with redirect (there were 95 page URL’s listed) after clicking on one there was a “Test Robots.TXT Blocking” so I did the test and it showed Yoast Blocking the main Yoast site map url… why would this be happening?

    Here are some screenshots:
    https://i.gyazo.com/241b70f69e2be91441df75f147c93824.png

    https://i.gyazo.com/006657ccc279e095a018589e3b63dabe.png

    Plugin Support Maybellyne

    (@maybellyne)

    WordPress adds /feed/ URLs to all pages by default, and it’s not about the Yoast SEO plugin. They’re set to?noindex?so that search engines won’t index them. So it’s fine; you don’t have to worry about those pages. You can learn more about feeds at?https://www.ads-software.com/support/article/wordpress-feeds/.

    From the screenshot, your robots.txt follows our recommendation and it’s not blocking indexing of any page. However, according to Google, a page with redirect?means it’s a non-canonical URL that redirects to another page. As such, this URL will not be indexed. The target URL of the redirect might or might not be indexed, depending on what Google thinks about that target URL.

    For those URLs reported as having redirects, you can use this tools to test/confirm if the redirects exists.

    Thread Starter C.Salzman

    (@csalzman)

    Hi Maybellyne,

    Fantastic info, thanks very much! Apparently the 2 URL’s Google picked up for the issue were indeed “feed” url’s so everything is good to go.
    I appreciate the education on those.

    Have a great week ahead. ??

    Hi,

    I would like to know why my client’s website is having “Alternate page with proper canonical tag” as well… currently we have 312 affected pages, when there are only 44 pages “live” on the website.

    This seems related to my recent updating of the yoast seo plugin. Will this slow my website down having these versions living on the database?

    Example “pages” showing up in google search console

    https://offgridcustoms.com/portfolio/?of=5.94.1May 9, 2023https://offgridcustoms.com/contact-us/?of=5.97.2May 3, 2023https://offgridcustoms.com/portfolio/?of=5.28.1May 3, 2023https://offgridcustoms.com/portfolio/?of=5.63.6May 2, 2023https://offgridcustoms.com/contact-us/?of=5.13.2

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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