Page is not indexed: Duplicate without user-selected canonical (Google Search Console)

[pegkensdogs]

I have a published google workspace site. It's a simple site, it has a /home and several other pages. All of the pages index on google search console except the domain name "https://EXAMPLENAME.com" and the Home page "https://EXAMPLENAME.com/home"

Google Search Console gives the error: Page is not indexed: Duplicate without user-selected canonical for both of those, which makes sense because they are the same.

Anything I do to change or alter the page /home will still make it the same as simply using the website domain URL, so they will always be the same.  Is there a way to rearrange this in editing the site,?

Note: I'm using the simple tools for designing the site. There is no ability to edit html code, although I can embed code in the simple editing tools available.

[StephenHind · Accepted solution]

@pegkensdogs this is correct and nothing to worry about.  Google Sites does not give the option to set the page's canonical URL, so Google Search just picks one instead.  Google Search Console is just telling you that; there's nothing to worry about and, therefore, nothing to do (plus you cannot do anything about it anyway).

Always bear in mind that Google Search Console is simply telling you facts: that doesn't mean you actually need to do anything about those facts unless there is an actual issue.

If you want to try and change it you could try this:

1. Change the path of your homepage to something else
2. Immediately go to Search Console and request indexing on its old path (/home)
3. Hopefully (as you're at the mercy of Search Console) it will see that the page is gone, but Search Console knows that these things can be temporary/accidental, so it may not remove it immediately
4. At the same time request indexing on the domain, without page path, and it may decide to use that as the canonical rather than the /path version (but again there's no guarantee)
5. You may want to try it a couple of times, but there's nothing to stop Search Console finding the new path for the homepage, and just indexing itself, and then deciding that's the canonical URL.

[StephenHind · Accepted solution]

@pegkensdogs this is correct and nothing to worry about.  Google Sites does not give the option to set the page's canonical URL, so Google Search just picks one instead.  Google Search Console is just telling you that; there's nothing to worry about and, therefore, nothing to do (plus you cannot do anything about it anyway).

Always bear in mind that Google Search Console is simply telling you facts: that doesn't mean you actually need to do anything about those facts unless there is an actual issue.

If you want to try and change it you could try this:

1. Change the path of your homepage to something else
2. Immediately go to Search Console and request indexing on its old path (/home)
3. Hopefully (as you're at the mercy of Search Console) it will see that the page is gone, but Search Console knows that these things can be temporary/accidental, so it may not remove it immediately
4. At the same time request indexing on the domain, without page path, and it may decide to use that as the canonical rather than the /path version (but again there's no guarantee)
5. You may want to try it a couple of times, but there's nothing to stop Search Console finding the new path for the homepage, and just indexing itself, and then deciding that's the canonical URL.

[pegkensdogs]

Thank you, that makes sense. 

I tried those steps and it is interesting. Search Console now won't index the domain or the /home path. There is a referring page that doesn't currently exist (from an old site this domain was hosted on). I've removed it with the removal tool but it might take some time for search console to sort it out.  I'm able to find the site just fine using either URL in a browser.

Yes, I'm learning that about Google Console. I've found many URLS in the indexing report with errors. They are very old and from the old web server with an ancient long paths with numbers, images, albums, etc which I am using the removal tool in the search console.

[StephenHind]

@pegkensdogs yes you will find that Search Console is always out of date: it's a report on what it last saw when it visited your site; if that was weeks/months ago then it's potentially out of date by weeks/months.

[pegkensdogs]

Thank you Stephen,

The analytics show constant visits to the site and at least the Search Console does put a date next to each URL in the indexing report. I think there are links on other websites that point to pages that no longer exist on our site.

[StephenHind · Accepted solution]

@pegkensdogs you either need to ask those sites to update those links, or visitors will see the Google Sites 404 page that provides the site navigation so they can find the pages on the site.

If you really want to do something you can always put a page back at the old URL with a button on directing people to the new page, e.g. here's an example on our site:

• https://www.steegle.com/g-suite

[pegkensdogs]

Thank you for that @StephenHind ! I will keep that in mind. I hope I can get the sites to change that because there are almost 100 different bad links.