Thread: Business SEO / PHP question
View Single Post
Old 09-12-2022, 08:07 AM  
TheLegacy
SEO Connoisseur
 
TheLegacy's Avatar
 
Industry Role:
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Brantford, Ontario
Posts: 17,524
hm. well that message generally means that the error "Duplicate without user-selected canonical” indicates that Google found duplicate URLs that are not canonicalized to a preferred version. Google didn't index these duplicate URLs, and assigned a canonical version on their own.

So for example if you've got a eCommerce site that also contains downloadable PDFs with the exact same product information as what's shown on product detail pages, you'll often find that Google has decided to canonicalize the PDFs to the product detail pages.

Ask yourself if these pages have a purpose - if your answer is no then simply remove these pages and return a HTTP status code 410.

Now if these pages do serve a purpose then canonicalize them to the preferred version of the URL. now where to canonicalize to? See which URL Google finds most relevant by using a URL Inspection tool. If Google's listing PDF files for your site, canonicalize them through the HTTP header.

If these pages don't carry any value, then make sure to apply the "noindex" directive through the meta robots tag or X-Robots-Tag HTTP Header.

Once again this is up to you
__________________
SEO Connoisseur


Microsoft Teams: Robert Warren SEO
Telegram: @TheLegacy54
RobertWarrenSEO.com
TheLegacy is offline   Share thread on Digg Share thread on Twitter Share thread on Reddit Share thread on Facebook Reply With Quote