Potential canonical WordPress issue incl. no search engine indexing

  • Hi all

    Today I spotted some search engine indexing issue, which after a bit of research, appears to be a canonical WordPress issue. I was checking, if some subpages of my site are in fact indexed, hence the FireFox SEO Doctor tool flagged various pages as non-indexable. I double checked this in google via “site:www.example.com/page/” too and it’s partly true.

    I am not sure why, but WordPress somewhat truncates post URLs that go deeper than one level i.e. www .example.com/core-articles/special/thearticle is truncated to www .example.com/core-articles/thearticle. It still works and directs correctly, but if I use the first example of URL with 2 sub directories (so to speak), it gets flagged as non-indexable by google and SEO Doctor. The truncated URL is indexed though.

    Any thoughts on that? Does it matter?

    Thanks for your help!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • change your permalink structure in settings . It will be fine

    Thread Starter BayLev

    (@baylev)

    Hi techonda

    Many thanks for your message. Can you elaborate on your suggestion a little more? My permalink structure is already set up in a custom way, hence the following example of a link (none of the ?=22424 etc.):

    EXAMPLE:
    www .example.com/shoes/boots/article

    The above URL structure would work as well, but the way WordPress wants to treat it is as this:

    www .example.com/shoes/article (without the second category in the link e.g. ‘boots’).

    This can be seen when hovering over the headline of a post – the URL it directs to. Both URL variations work, but the one with one additional category (boots) in the link is flagged by google and SEO Doctor as non-indexable and is in fact not indexed either. The shortened URL, where WordPress drops the second category (boots) in the URL is indexed though.

    I mean, a URL with 2 or more categories shouldn’t be a problem hence WP gives you the choice to set these up in the first place.

    Thanks again

    Thread Starter BayLev

    (@baylev)

    Hi all

    Sorry, this issue is not resolved yet ?? The question is basically still the same.

    Example:
    I created a post category structure as follows:

    – Shoes
    — Boots

    So I use the links in posts as follows domain.com/shoes/boots/articleA even though WP likes to resolve to canonical domain.com/shoes/articleA regardless.

    It drops the /boots/ category and it’s the first link variation that is being flagged as non-indexable as well as really isn’t indexed in the search engines, while (better than nothing) the one where /boots/ has been dropped is in in fact indexed.

    I use a custom permalink structure, so non of the PHP gibberish in the link. Is anyone else experiencing this problem?

    Thanks!!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘Potential canonical WordPress issue incl. no search engine indexing’ is closed to new replies.