Canonical Tag being ignored?

[Thos003]

I have a blog post I created and added a canonical to that page, yet the blog post is the one showing in Google's results and not the canonical version. Why is this?

[BenFox]

Obvious one first - it could be an error in how you've implemented the canonical tag.

Or Google may have decided that it trusts/likes the duplicate page more than the original. As with anything if Google think you're wrong then they'll override your decision and do as they please.

[Dr-Pete]

Yeah, it can be tough to tell. Adding to Ben's list, which I'd agree with:

(1) There's a conflicting crawler signal in place - META Robots, 301-redirect, etc.

(2) Internal links still point to the non-canonical version (also a conflicting signal)

(3) It's not duplicate enough, for lack of a better way to say it (Google has over-rided it)

(4) There's something wrong with the target page, like a bad header

[Thos003]

Thanks. It is likely #2 with a combination of more external links going to that page.

[Thos003]

Thanks Ben. Very annoying how Google does that.