PLEASE HELP - Old query string URL causing problems
-
For a long time, we were ranking 1st/2nd for the term "Manual handling training". That was until about 5 days ago when I realised that Google had started to index not only a query stringed URL, but also an old version of the URL.
What was even weirder was that when you clicked on the result it 301 redirected to the page that it was meant to display...
The wrong URL that Google had started to index was: www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling?channel=retail
The correct URL that it should have been indexing is: https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling-training
I can't get my head around why it has done this as a 301 was in place already and we use rel canonical tags which point to the main parent pages.
Anyway, we slapped a noindex tag in our robots.txt file to stop that page from being indexed, which worked but now I can't get the correct page to be indexed, even after a Google fetch.
After inspecting the correct URL in the new search console I discovered that Google has ignored the rel canonical on the page (Which points to itself) and has selected the wrong, query stringed URL as the canonical. Why? and how do I rectify this?
-
Brilliant! good luck with it. Please do me a favour and hit the 'good answer' button thanks
-
Thanks Nigel,
This is being actioned
Hugely appreciate your time.
-
Hi iHasco
It doesn't only affect this URL. I only quickly looked at the sitemap (https://www.ihasco.co.uk/site-map/google) but found that other one as well. I don't know what the defunct page URL so have no idea why it is listing that but it (Google) is not listing the main one or the one with the slash. The fact is that both work so you need to get rid of one.
I can't possibly explain how your dynamic system has done this I can only illustrate the problem and give you a solution. I hope you deem the solution more than just 'an interesting point'
Regards
Nigel
-
Hi Nigel,
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
That's an interesting point but why would this problem only affect this URL?
We have over 80 pages (courses) which use the same template. These pages are dynamic, so if one page is experiencing problems in Google (such as pulling an old URL) why aren't the other 79 pages doing the same?
Also, I understand that the trailing slash could be seen as a duplicate page in Google, however, this doesn’t explain why it’s pulling an old (now redirected) URL of that page? We don’t use that old URL anywhere on our site, no even in the sitemap.
Many thanks,
-
Hi iHasco
Neither seem to rank.
What I think
Your sitemap has the wrong URL in it - with a trailing slash at the end: https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling-training/
The website has a version without a trailing slash! https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling-trainingThis means there are effectively two versions of this page so you have perfect duplication as both are regarded as different by Google.
The Solution: 1. Remove the trailing slash version of the page.
2. 301 redirect the trailing slash to the non-trailing slash in htaccess
3. Check for other problems in the sitemap - eg you have a page https://www.ihasco.co.uk/terms-and-policies/terms-and-conditions-of-use/ in the sitemap which redirects to **https://www.ihasco.co.uk/terms-and-policies. **If there is a redirect or a canonical in place DO NOT put the original URLs in the sitemap!
4. Put a general directive in htaccess 301'ing all trailing slashes to non-trailing slashes to avoid any further problems.
5. For a quicker result go to Seach Console and physically remove the trailing slash version of the page. It'll be gone tomorrow. At the same time to a Fetch Google for the correct URL - you will be back at number 1-3 within a week.You basically have a situation where you have duplicate content, Google doesn't know which version to rank so ranks neither. You also have a problem where Google does not trust your sitemap so make sure the sitemap is a pure reflection of what is on the site. If you don't then Google will not trust your 301s or canonicals and could end up ranking other spurious pages.
I hope that helps
Regards
Nigel
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why a certain URL ( a category URL ) disappears?
the page hasn't been spammed. - links are natural - onpage grader is perfect - there are useful high ranking articles linking to the page...pretty much everything is okay.....also all of my websites pages are okay and none of them has disappeared only this one ( the most important category of my site. )
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mohamadalieskandariii0 -
Please help us undertsand the things we need to improve so that google crawler visit us more often to reindex pages from our domain
we are currently in the process of a massive project which involves us migrating our domain, we realised that Google crawlwer has not been crawling our pages Quiet often. i have observed some cases where google crawled these pages about 6 months back and then never visited the pages again
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bhaskaran
and we had to manually submit these pages for reindexing in some geographies. can you please help us undertsand the things we need to improve so that google crawler visit us more often to reindex pages from our domain0 -
URL in russian
Hi everyone, I am doing an audit of a site that currently have a lot of 500 errors due to the russian langage. Basically, all the url's look that way for every page in russian: http://www.exemple.com/ru-kg/pешения-для/food-packaging-machines/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alexrbrg
http://www.exemple.com/ru-kg/pешения-для/wood-flour-solutions/
http://www.exemple.com/ru-kg/pешения-для/cellulose-solutions/ I am wondering if this error is really caused by the server or if Google have difficulty reading the russian langage in URL's. Is it better to have the URL's only in english ?0 -
How would you address these URLS
Hey Mozzers, long time no post. Just a quick one for you regarding URLS, this is an example of a url on a site https://www.thisismyurl.co.uk/products/spacehoppers/special-spacehopper.html Many of these pages are getting flagged for having a url that is too long. The target of this page is "special spacehoppers". Should i be concerned with the url being to long given my keyword is at the end? Would this be a suitable idea? https://www.thisismyurl.co.uk/p/spacehoppers/special.html Would changing products to p be worthwhile? It would remove length from nearly all urls but would require a site wide re-direct. 2)Would removing the "spacehoppers" bit from the url be worth it? Yes it would shorten the url but would also remove the exact keyword from the url which could be detrimental to rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP0 -
Backlinks from old domain
Hi, We have gone through a change of company brand name including a new domain name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agguk
We followed google recommendations at: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en and it seems to have worked really well, the new domain has replaced the old in the google search results. My question: Still most of our backlinks, both anchor text and links use the old brand name and domain and it´s a slow process trying to update all references. Although they get redirected fine to the new domain (also following google recommendations), I wonder if the current scenario is doing any harm, SEO wise (other than the missed visual exposure of the new brand name) ? ...since the old brand name is not present at the new site I´m thinking of including "New brand name - previously old brand name" somewhere just to provide some sort of connection to all old backlinks, would that be unnecessary? I should mention that the old brand name actually includes our most important keyword but the new brand name does not. Thanks!0 -
URL Structure Question
Am starting to work with a new site that has a domain name contrived to help it with a certain kind of long tail search. Just for fictional example sake, let's call it WhatAreTheBestRestaurantsIn.com. The idea is that people might do searches for "what are the best restaurants in seattle" and over time they would make some organic search progress. Again, fictional top level domain example, but the real thing is just like that and designed to be cities in all states. Here's the question, if you were targeting searches like the above and had that domain to work with, would you go with... whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/seattle-washington whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/washington/seattle whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/wa/seattle whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/what-are-the-best-restaurants-in-seattle-wa ... or what and why? Separate question (still need the above answered), would you rather go with a super short (4 letter), but meaningless domain name, and stick the longtail part after that? I doubt I can win the argument the new domain name, so still need the first question answered. The good news is it's pretty good content. Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
More Indexed Pages than URLs on site.
According to webmaster tools, the number of pages indexed by Google on my site doubled yesterday (gone from 150K to 450K). Usually I would be jumping for joy but now I have more indexed pages than actual pages on my site. I have checked for duplicate URLs pointing to the same product page but can't see any, pagination in category pages doesn't seem to be indexed nor does parameterisation in URLs from advanced filtration. Using the site: operator we get a different result on google.com (450K) to google.co.uk (150K). Anyone got any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidLenehan0 -
Could ranking problem be caused by Parked Domain?
I've been investigating a serious Google ranking drop for a small website in the UK. They used to rank top 5 for about 10 main keywords and overnight on 24/3/12 they lost rankings. They have not ranked in top100 since. Their pages are still indexed and they can still be found for their brand/domain name so they have not been removed completely. I've coverered all the normal issues you would expect to look for and no serious errors exist that would lead to what in effect looks like a penalty. The investigation has led to a an issue about their domain registration setup. The whois record (at domaintools) shows the status as "Registered and Parked or Redirected" which seems a bit unusual. Checking the registration details they had DNS settings pointing correctly to the webhost but also had web forwarding to the domain registrar's standard parked domain page. The domain registrar has suggested that this duplication could have caused ranking problems. What do you think? Is this a realistic reason for their ranking loss? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjalc20110