Google Search Bug Selecting Unrelated Canonical URLs & Indexing Issues
Google has announced on Twitter a new bug yesterday, this time with Google possibly selecting unrelated canonical URLs. Google said this can impact breadcrumb trails on mobile which might reflect the unrelated URLs. Google also said “in rare cases, it might prevent proper indexing.”
Google said they are fixing this and will update us when it is fully resolved.
I personally did not see many complaints about this issue in the forums, but clearly Google spotted this bug and was transparent about revealing the issue.
Here is the tweet announcing it:
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
In addition, Google said this can cause new indexing issues where Google won’t index specific URLs. This doesn’t seem related to the indexing issue they fixed weeks ago, nor the more recent Google News indexing issue. It seems new.
Google also said one more time that they are still working on the Search Console delays due to the indexing:
We’re also still working on resolving the issue with fresh data and correct live status reporting in Search Console. We’ll update our previous thread on that, when this is done. https://t.co/DVYlHx37tW
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) April 25, 2019
This is still very delayed.
Note: I wrote this after producing the SEO video recap – so I don’t discuss it in this week’s recap.
Forum discussion at Twitter.