Page missing from Google index

[leo92]

Hi all,

One of our most important pages seems to be missing from the Google index.

A number of our collections pages (e.g., http://perfectlinens.com/collections/size-king) are thin, so we've included a canonical reference in all of them to the main collection page (http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all).

However, I don't see the main collection page in any Google search result. When I search using "info:http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all", the page displayed is our homepage. Why is this happening?

The main collection page has a rel=canonical reference to itself (auto-generated by Shopify so I can't control that).

Thanks!

WUKeBVB

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

First, those pages (size-king) should be canonicalized to their own pages, not canonicaling back to the "all" pages. This could be a potentially bad customer experience and you could be missing out on a LOT of organic traffic if some of those product pages are targeting high volume, low competition keywords / variations.

I would work on expanding the content on those product pages and implementing Schema. You have a lot of opportunities to be implementing these tags which will also help your search visibility.

Lastly, depending on when you implemented these canonical tags and your sitemap, Google and other search engines could still be indexing them. When did you upload your sitemap / implement canonical tags? Also, have you submitted these sitemaps to Google and Bing? I recommend you do so if you didn't!

And always make sure your robots.txt and meta tags aren't inadvertently blocking key pages from search! This is an often overlooked area in SEO!

But more than anything - work on that content for your product, canonical tag them to their pages, and add schema. It will make a world a difference!

Hope this helps! Good luck!
Patrick

[leo92]

Patrick, thank you for your response.

1. The reason we're using canonical references on those pages is because they are almost identical copies of each other. In the future, we'll create some content on them and they can then stand by themselves.

2. But the original question remains - why is the main page (http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all) missing from the Google index? It's been on the site for a long time, it's one of our most important pages, it's in our sitemap, and robots.txt is not blocking it.

Thank you for your other tips though - I appreciate them, and will put them on our to-do list.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There!

That page is in fact indexed and cached for me! Can you check again? And let me know?

-Dan

[evolvingSEO]

FYI - to check if a page is indexed try typing site:http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all into the Google search bar, or cache:http://perfectlinens.com/collections/all into your browser.

[leo92]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your response. The page that you see when you type in our category page is in fact, our home page. e.g., when I do info:page A, or cache: page A, the result is for page B. Why is this happening if page A does not have a canonical reference or a redirect of any kind to B?

Thanks.

[evolvingSEO]

Hello

Ahh ok, missed that detail.

I created a quick video for you ---> http://screencast.com/t/IKkEikyr

I think this is a bit of a complicated situation which will be tough to diagnose and fix in a Q&A thread. I would suggest catalog the different settings of your site in a spreadsheet like I show in the video.

Essentially, the canonical settings are just "suggestions" for Google and not "directives" so they will ignore them if they think they have been set in error.

I would start by clearly defining the end result you want (what pages should be crawled, and what should be indexed) and work backwards from there to apply the right settings.

I would probably try to use noindex, robots.txt etc before resorting to a canonical.

[leo92]

Dan, thanks for that response! I wasn't aware that our homepage had a canonical reference to our category page. On closer examination, I found that our category page in return had a canonical reference to our homepage. Messed up!

I've fixed that, and now resubmitted that page to Google using Search Console. Hopefully that will fix our issues.

Just one last question - why do you prefer noindex over canonical? If I had some backlinks to a thin category page (e.g., /collections/twin), wouldn't it be better to 'transfer' those benefits to our main category page (/collections/all) using canonical references?

Thanks again

[evolvingSEO]

In general, for link value to transfer either through 301s or canonicals, the content of the page needs to be nearly identical. See Cyrus' post for more. And canonicals are not always followed by Google, they are just a "hint", so it's unlikely you'll pass much value that way.