Canonical URL Problem

Hi Bichareh,

Thanks for the compliments! ??

The issue
Because a number is put it, WordPress thinks it a paginated page.

As you can see from the title, adding /123/ will make WordPress think it’s paginated. The title output will be as follows:
Jeffrey Dean Morgan: ?The Walking Dead“ ist jetzt Negans Welt! – Seite 123 – Promicabana

This is something that should also be resolved at WordPress core. To first determine if the pagination is possible (is_paged in combination with query variables page and paged, with their respective globals $page and $paged).

I’m unsure if that comparison is possible, but if it is, I’ll be sure to implement a fix for a better canonical URL (by the least) and maybe a better title in the next version (2.7.0).

A (temporarily) solution, until I know more
First off, you need to be sure that other sites link to the “paginated” page. Otherwise you’ll be doing work for nothing.

Google only visits pages that are known and linked to.
Side-note: This is why I keep saying a sitemap is redundant, as it just shows links that the user should already see somewhere anyway.

To view which pages are being linked to, you can check them out in Google Search Console. This is a very tedious job.

Then, if you’ve found the pages that seem paginated, but aren’t, you can simply fill in the Custom Canonical URL within the “Page SEO Settings Metabox” that leads directly to itself.

This will replace the estimated Canonical URL with the forced Canonical URL in the output.

Final thoughts
It is obviously detected as a duplicated page, but the chances of Google finding it are relatively low (unless someone links to the paginated page).

This is a cause for concern, especially as it’s now exposed. So I’ll be sure to check out the parameters. And if it’s solvable, I’ll be sure to open a WordPress Core ticket on this issue with the title and adding possible solutions.
I’ll also be sure to see if I can fix this in 2.7.0.

I hope this all clears things up. Thanks and have a great day!

Wow! Thats a long answer…greeeeat support, way better than Yoast. ??

The problem is, in the past Google indexed many “paginated” articles of my site, although they were not really paginated and only copys of the original article. I don’t know where it came from, since they weren’t linked anywhere. I had to delete them manually via Webmastertools. That was crazy!

It would be great, if you find any solution in the next plugin Version. :-)))

Many thanks!

Hi Bichareh,

I’ve confirmed all variables and it will be fixed in the 2.7.0 release.

Core trac ticket: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/37505#ticket

Hello ??

The fix has been released on GitHub. <The commit>.

It still requires a lot of testing (it’s written in less than half an hour) so it’s in the “bleeding edge/nightly” repository: <master branch>.

Feel free to test it out, but please be aware that the beta/nightly version should not be used on a production website.

Have a great day!