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Do you check Google Webmaster Tools? Under Search Appearance > HTML Improvements Google will list duplicate titles and descriptions among other things, which might be a help to you.

Use the infographic. Seriously. That is what I did to explain the concept to our developer and it worked better than any long-winded descriptions I had tried.

This has happened to me as well, having an old name show up in the search results. Google does not always use what you put in the title tag for the page title if it thinks that something else is more relevant.

In my case, there were still a good number of external links to the site with the old name being the anchor text, which is where Google got it, I assume. I see on your site that variations on "Colour Pages" are used in a number of your links; maybe that's where Google is picking it up.

The title tag is what Google often shows in the search results. And external websites, especially social, often use title tags as anchor text for links. So even though you don't see it at the top of the page in mobile, it is an important element.

First, are you sure that the people who are arriving at the arctic page really want to see all of the holidays and not the arctic ones? The arctic page is pretty well optimized for "arctic", and it is in the title and description. Take a look in your Webmaster Tools at those pages and see which keywords are bringing them up.

If you have a good reason to think that people really want the more general page (page A) but it is not getting a lot of traffic, putting that content on the arctic page (page B) probably won't solve your problem as there is obviously some reason page A is not doing as well and you are just spreading around the content that is not working.

I don't think your answer lies in making the pages duplicates--you should actually be making them more different from each other so the arctic one is very clearly specific for arctic trips and the overview one for general inquiries.

And in the meantime you could put a prominent link at the top of your arctic page linking back to the overview page, saying something like, "For more ideas, see all of our suggested holidays." (In fact there should be a link like that on each of your specialty pages, pointing back to the general page--that will help build the authority of page A and help it rank higher in the SERPs.)

The on-page grader grades the pages that rank in the top 50 for a keyword in one of your campaigns, so even though you didn't optimize for those particular keywords, that page is ranking for them anyway.

When you see a grade of "F" for a search term that doesn't apply to that page, you don't need to worry about it. Sometimes pages do rank for keywords other than the ones we are optimizing for.

And here is Matt Cutts talking about multiple redirects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA

There is a wikipedia article using the old name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_Colour_Pages

I bet that editing that would go a long way to fixing your problem...

What are you trying to achieve? Do you particularly want the index.html version to be the canonical? The https://www.mysite.com/ version is more straightforward and what most people would expect your homepage URL to be.

Unless there is some pressing reason to do otherwise, I'd leave it the way it is.

OK, I think I understand what you are asking now.

Canonicals are for identical or near-identical pages. I don't know that those two pages would be considered to be identical, even after you added the arctic listings to the Canada page, especially as the above-the-fold content is different.

Keep in mind that the "penalty" for duplicate content is that Google will choose only one page to show, depending on which one it thinks is most relevant. And if you have one page that gets a lot more traffic and engagement, that is likely to be the one Google chooses, anyway.

If I were you, I'd probably make sure the description sections at the top of those pages each has a good bit of unique content and maybe I'd change the titles and h1s to make them a little more different from each other (if you can do that) then I'd just leave it at that and see what Google makes of it.

If it seems that your higher traffic page starts to lose traffic, you can always add the canonicals then, and resubmit the URL through Fetch as Google in Webmaster Tools.

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When I put your site into Open Site Explorer, I do not see any backlinks at all. I see 12 in Majestic (with a zero trust flow) and three in SEMRush. Google cosiders links to be very important, so I'd think that this could be your problem. Here is a webmasterworld discussion on the topic of ranking on Bing/Yahoo but not Google.

Web MD which ranks at the top for both dog allergies and cat allergies (the plural form seems to be more popular) has them on separate pages. The content on the pages is similar, but not identical. (For example only the cat page talks about allergic symptoms from being licked or scratched.)

I see your point, and don't worry about it. Sitemaps help Google find all of your pages and can provide certain other information, but they are not required so no need to overthink them. In general Google is pretty good at finding what it needs to find. And it will certainly find your homepage.

You can also use Screaming Frog to look at the linking page--look in the "Meta & Canonical" tab to see if it's nofollow or not. [It is free for a limited number of pages.]

The # Root Domains Linking? That's a number, not a logarithmic scale.

I use the paid version, so that's not an issue for me.

I know Wordpress has sitemap plugins and a number of CMSs have built-in sitemap generators, I don't know if either of these applies to you.

They load for me.

Would it be possible to put your introductory material as footnotes, after the articles, rather than at the beginning? Google tends to give "above the fold" material more weight.

Yes, that's a good point. Canonicals are suggestions for Google, not commands.

A couple of thoughts--yes, that is not what rel=canonical is for. It is meant for identical or nearly identical pages. If you wanted that effect you could noindex the training pages, but you say you don't want that, so both of those choices are out.

If you have multiple training pages that go to one product, you will presumably have links on those multiple training pages back to that one product page, and that will be a sign to Google that the product page is important.

Also, if the product page stays up and the training pages are up for a short while and then go away, those short-term training pages are unlikely to overtake the product page that remains up and is able to attract links and other positive signals.