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For some reason, my Main URL (https://www.foxteller.com) cannot be indexed because of my domain redirects in the apache2 config.

My redirects go as follows:

The following error appears when I try to inspect my URL on the webmaster tools:
Duplicate without user-selected canonical

I understand Canonical tags are used to define duplicate pages. But I never knew it could be used in an apache redirect. At least according to Google, it can. But in this case, I don't understand why it is during an Apache2 Redirect. No page is being generated during the redirect as it is a 301 redirect. So I cannot use a Canonical tag.

I also asked this question in the Google products forums but sadly these "Experts" apparently do not seem to know a lot regarding canonical changes Google made in October 2018.

This is my Apache2 Config for the HTTP redirect:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin [email protected]
  ServerName foxteller.com
  ServerAlias fox-teller.com foxtellers.com
  ServerAlias *.foxteller.com *.fox-teller.com *.foxtellers.com

  RedirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ https://www.foxteller.com
</VirtualHost>

Image of the warning

Please do note that the page is indexed on google. But the metadata you see on there is about 2-3 months old and it cannot be refreshed due to this error.

The page is completely unable to index the updated page due to this.

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5
  • Why are you inspecting your http:// URL? If it redirects inspecting it won't give you any interesting data. You should be inspecting your https:// URL.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Jan 17, 2019 at 15:58
  • Hi Stephen, this is the https ://www.foxteller.com page being inspected. The Referring page is, in this case, the conflicting page as far as I'm aware of. I've updated the image with the URL of the inspected page.
    – Loomi
    Commented Jan 17, 2019 at 17:14
  • How long ago did you put your redirects in place? The data might just not be updated yet.
    – Maximillian Laumeister ♦
    Commented Jan 17, 2019 at 17:27
  • I agree with that. When I moved my site to https, it took Google a year to move all 20,000 pages over in it's index.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Jan 17, 2019 at 18:17
  • The redirects have been in place for about 2-3 months now. But the issue is that even though it's a 301 redirect Google refuses to index the homepage. It says it's excluded from indexing due to this. Google indexed the whole sitemap. The issue only lies at the homepage. The other domains never had any content on them.
    – Loomi
    Commented Jan 17, 2019 at 21:31

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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i even tested your redirects - they don't work. Every domain exists at its own.

This should work:

<VirtualHost *:80 *:443>
    SSLEngine On
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    Redirect permanent / https://www.example.com/
</VirtualHost>
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1
  • I removed the redirects to see if that resolves the indexing issue. That's why it might have seemed that the redirects are not working. Sorry for the confusion caused by this.
    – Loomi
    Commented Jan 18, 2019 at 12:25

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