Why is a canonicalized URL still in index?

[yaelslater]

Hi Mozers,

We recently canonicalized a few thousand URLs but when I search for these pages using the site: operator I can see that they are all still in Google's index. Why is that?

Is it reasonable to expect that they would be taken out of the index? Or should we only expect that they won't rank as high as the canonical URLs?

Thanks!

[GastonRiera]

Hi there!

Canonical tags aren´t that immediate and automatic as its considered.
This happens because google needs to recrawl all your site, more precisely, every of that URL that have been canonicalized.
In my experience with XXL sites when canonicalizing, it takes arround 6 weeks to move arround 60% of the URLs. This checked with Traffic in Search console (most of the cases were when moving to https in the last 12 months)
Also, there are some little to nothing in traffic from those already canonicalized pages, 12 month ago!

Yes its reasonable to expect that all those canonicalized URLs to be changed for the correct URL. Even, in some cases when searching for that exact URL the result shows the canonicalized one.
The thing about ranking worse.. its not that simple, because you are telling google to switch URLs.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR

[paupastorlopez]

Hi yaelslater,

I've seen an experiment about this, and Google will still index the canonicalized urls, but in theory, it will show to a related term search the one the canonicals are pointing to.

The first 2 urls of this search are the ones of the experiment:

https://www.google.es/search?q=site:estrategia-seo.com+prueba+canonical&rlz=1C1CHBD_esES777ES777&filter=0&biw=1920&bih=949

You can see in the code the canonical.

The experiment is from 2013! so don't expect those urls to be taken out from the index. If you are looking for this, you should use other techniques like robots.txt to block indexation or redirects 301 to permanently redirect.

Greetings!

[yaelslater]

Really helpful thanks! Yael

[yaelslater]

Also helpful, thanks! Yael