Canonical Tags being indexed on paginated results?

[IrvCo_Interactive]

On a website I'm working on which has a search feature with paginated results, all of the pages of the search results are set with a canonical tag back to the first page of the search results, however Google is indexing certain random pages within the result set. I can literally do a search in Google and find a deep page in the results, click on it and view source on that page and see that it has a canonical tag leading back to the first page of the set.

Has anyone experienced this before? Why would Google not honor a canonical tag if it is set correctly? I've seen several SEO techniques for dealing with pagination, is there another solution that you all recommend?

[gazzerman1]

Has anyone experienced this before? YES

Why would Google not honor a canonical tag if it is set correctly?

The canonical tag is a recommendation, Google will make its on decisions on whether to use it or not. If you do not want it to be indexed why not put a noindex meta tag there as well. This will make sure that you get the desired result.

Google is seeing enough difference between the pages that it thinks those pages offer more value for the term searched.

Does that make sense?

[IrvCo_Interactive]

Yes that makes perfect sense. I had no idea that Google would use its own discretion on whether to honor a canonical tag or not! Totally agree that noindex is the way to go then. Thanks!