Selecting canonical

[Wirenut]

Some of the main pages on my website show up on Search Console under:
"Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical
Status: Excluded"

These are pages that I put into the sitemap, which I thought would make them canonical. It says that they are excluded, but those exact pages show up in organic search.

Two questions, is this hurting my rankings? Second, is there a way to fix this? I use Joomla so adding code to each page isn't just copying and pasting.

 

[Matthew Summers]

Just putting them in the sitemap doesn't necessarily make them canonical.

I'd recommend inspecting the URLs within Search Console (using the "Inspect any URL" tool at the top of the page). Then look under Coverage > Indexing and you should get an answer on which URLs Google thinks are canonical.

Hope that's helpful!

 

[Wirenut]

So I did as you said and it's telling me that the "Google-selected canonical" is the exact same URL, only with http.

Just to explain, the URL that I have in the sitemap, that I want to use, and that Google is saying is "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical" is https. When inspecting that, it is telling me that the page that the "Google-selected canonical" page is the exact same page only with http.

I switched my website from http to https a month ago. I updated all the links and sitemap to reflect the https URL.

 

[pony]

do the http versions 301 to the https versions now?

If you wanted to make sure, you could add canonicals on the http versions pointing to the https versions.

 

[Wirenut]

Yes, all http is redirected to the https version. The http version essentially doesn't exist.

 

[pony]

What happens when you inspect the http versions? If your site is really small, and the change was recent, they may have just not crawled the older pages to see the 301s yet.

 

[Matthew Summers]

What happens when you inspect the http versions? If your site is really small, and the change was recent, they may have just not crawled the older pages to see the 301s yet.

That was my thought as well. @Wirenut , do you have the http URL prefix property verified in GSC as well? If so, you could inspect the http versions of the URLs, and submit them for reindexing. At least it might give you more information about what's going on!

 

[Wirenut]

It says that the http version is a "Canonical URL not in property". It won't allow me to inspect it while I am in the https property in Search Console.

So if I change over to the Search Console property http I can then Inspect it.

 

[Wirenut]

So I should submit the http versions for reindexing, not the https versions?

Is there a way to do that in a batch instead of doing it individually per page?

 

[Matthew Summers]

That's the idea. The goal is for Google to see that the http version is 301ing to the https version - which should hopefully make the big G change it's mind about which one is canonical!

I'm not sure about doing it in a batch - I've only ever done it individually before.

 

[Matthew Summers]

Is there a way to do that in a batch instead of doing it individually per page?

This might help: Here’s a script to bulk submit URLs to Google’s Indexing API

Though be aware, I haven't tried this method before & it may not still work.

 

[Wirenut]

I'll just do it manually, my website isn't that big.

Thanks!

 

[Matthew Summers]

I'll just do it manually, my website isn't that big.

Thanks!

You're welcome!