Why isn't the rel=canonical tag working?

[Inevo]

My client and I have a problem: An ecommerce store with around 20 000 products has nearly 1 000 000 pages indexed (according to Search Console).

I frequently get notified by messages saying “High number of URLs found” in search console. It lists a lot of sample urls with filter and parameters that are indexed by google, for example:

https://www.gsport.no/barn-junior/tilbehor/hansker-votter/junior?stoerrelse-324=10-11-aar+10-aar+6-aar+12-aar+4-5-aar+8-9-aar&egenskaper-368=vindtett+vanntett&type-365=hansker&bruksomraade-367=fritid+alpint&dir=asc&order=name

If you check the source code, there’s a canonical tag telling the crawler to ignore (..or technically commanding it to regard this exact page as another version of the page without all the parameters) everything after the “?”

Does this url showing up in the Search Console message mean that this canonical isn’t working properly?

If so: what’s wrong with it?

Regards,
Sigurd

[LoganRay]

Hi Sigurd,

Your implementation of canonicals is almost there. You're currently using the relative URL, when you should be using absolute URLs. As per Google Search Console guidelines, relative URLs here can cause issues.

[GlobeRunner]

Logan is correct--if you look at the canonical tag in your example in the source code you're not using the full URL, you're only using a snippet (the relative) URL. So, rather than /barn-junior/tilbehor/hansker-votter/junior you need to change it to https://www.gsport.no/barn-junior/tilbehor/hansker-votter/junior.