Canonical Tag Not Being Recognized

Question

I'm puzzled by the first Google search result in this list.

The first result has the following rel="canonical" tag:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://seatgeek.com/colorado-buffaloes-basketball-tickets/" />

So shouldn't the URL in the tag be indexed instead of the one with "?date=2011-03-29" on the end?

Answer 1

You would think so, however Google has explicitly stated that the rel=canonical link element is a hint for search engines - as opposed to a directive (such as a redirect).

We have implemented rel-con on a site with 2+ million pages indexed and see a large proportion of non-canonical URLs indexed. I believe this may correct over time, but at this stage Google (et.al) are taking their time to analyse the implementation.