0

I have requested an index for a website however am being shown this message:

Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical

enter image description here

I do not have any duplicates of this site according to google and I have added a canonical tag to my websites head as well - but I am still getting this message.

enter image description here

However if I use the live test I am given (what seems) a more positive message - saying the site can be indexed.

enter image description here

I have requested for the site to be re-index but am still seeing the same results after waiting a number of days.

Its worth noting that this site is being index technically: according to google, if you are able to find your site by following these steps

  1. google search
  2. type in: site:<Your site name.exstention> i.e. site:google.com

This does produce a search result:

enter image description here

I'm not quiet sure how to make google search console track the website - as it is providing no data and I assume (but could be wrong) that this is because of a underlying cause:

Improve this question
5
  • Google doesn't always honor canonical tags. For whatever reason, Google thinks that including the www in the URL is better. You can see data about your site in search console if you add the prefix property with https://www or you add the domain property.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Aug 3, 2021 at 12:20
  • Hi @StephenOstermiller - Thank you for your feedback - adding the www. version of the webpage to google search console did reveal that it was the www. version that was indexed - this is odd in my mind - as I have a http to https redirect the website also loads as X.com not www.X.com - I am yet waiting for the data of the site to be collected as a metric - I was wondering if you had any resources to share on this knowledge? The suggested duplicate question does not seem to cover this issue - however I will most likerly need to re-write the question. Thanks again for you help - W
    – Wally
    Commented Aug 3, 2021 at 14:38
  • Your site works with www or no-www. If you configure it to redirect to no-www rather than relying on canonicals, redirects are stronger signal and Google is much more likely to choose your preferred URL if you use redirects.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Aug 3, 2021 at 14:44
  • Would the ideal place to do this be in the .htacsess file?
    – Wally
    Commented Aug 3, 2021 at 14:52
  • 1
    It depends on how your site is hosted. If you are using cPanel based shared hosting then rewrite rules in.htaccess is a good option (and usually the only option). If you have control over your web server config, I usually suggest creating separate virtual hosts for www and no-www and using Redirect directives in the one you want to redirect. If you are using some other web server (like IIS or Nginx) then you would need to consult the documentation for it. If you are using a managed hosting service (like Google Sites, or Wix) redirects get implemented in their interface.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Aug 3, 2021 at 15:35

0

Reset to default