Google bug may select unrelated canonical URLs, could impact indexing

Google tweeted Thursday that it may have selected unrelated canonical URLs for some pages and that breadcrumb trails on mobile might show the unrelated URLs.

It also said that, in rare instances, this could prevent proper indexing.

Here’s the tweet:

We’re aware for some pages, there’s an issue where we may have selected an unrelated canonical URL. In turn, breadcrumb trails on mobile might reflect the unrelated URLs. In rare cases, it might prevent proper indexing. We’ve been fixing this & will update when fully resolved.

— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) April 25, 2019

Breadcrumbs show a page’s position in the hierarchy of the site and appear under titles in the search results.

Google did not say whether this latest issue is related to the indexing, Search Console report and News bugs that we’ve witnessed over the last few weeks.

What we can do. Google did not offer any actions for webmasters or SEOs to take. But, if you suspect that your pages are affected, you can view the Google-selected canonical URL by heading to your Search Console and entering your page’s address into the URL Inspection tool.

If there’s a better canonical URL than the one that appears, follow the steps on Google’s duplicate URL help page to suggest a new one.

Why we should care. This is the fourth bug that Google has disclosed in April, and it is still resolving issues with Search Console reports, which has some SEOs frustrated over its general lack of reliability as of late.

Although Google was transparent about the existence of an issue, it has yet to provide more useful, detailed information on how the problem is affecting users. Is the bug resulting in incorrect pages on SERPs? Is it showing the correct pages but linking elsewhere? All of this information could be useful for SEOs and webmasters trying to do some damage control.  

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About The Author

George Nguyen

George Nguyen was an editor for Search Engine Land, covering organic and paid search. His background is in journalism and content marketing. Prior to entering the industry, he worked as a radio personality, writer, podcast host and public school teacher.