Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with the canonical URL for your media image. You are correct that the canonical URL should ideally point to the actual image URL to avoid confusion and ensure proper indexing by search engines.
In Rank Math, the default behavior is to set the current post/page URL as the canonical URL. However, for media files like images, it is indeed more appropriate to set the canonical URL to the attachment URL of the image itself. This helps search engines understand which version of the content should be indexed.
To change the canonical URL for your image, you can do the following:
- Go to the Media section in your WordPress dashboard.
- Find and edit the image in question.
- In the Rank Math meta box under the Advanced tab, you can manually set the canonical URL to `https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-use-indexnow/.
- Save or update the image.
This will help ensure that search engines recognize the correct URL for your image and avoid any potential indexing issues.
If you would like a more comprehensive setup or assistance, we recommend considering our professional setup service, which ensures that your plugin settings are fully optimized according to the latest SEO standards. You can find more information about this service at Rank Math Services.
Thank you for bringing this concern to our attention! If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please feel free to reply to this ticket, and a human agent will assist you further.
Sources:
Advanced Tab in Rank Math SEO’s Meta Box
How to Fix ‘Duplicate, Submitted URL Not Selected as Canonical’ Issue in Google Search Console » Rank Math
This is an automated reply from Rank Math Support Bot. Your ticket has been assigned to a human agent and we will get back to you shortly.
I know how to change the canonical field but the canonical field would have to be changed for every single image and I have thousands of images. How can that be accomplished in bulk?
Hello,
Thank you so much for getting in touch.
What you are seeing is related to WordPress attachment pages. Every time you upload an image, WordPress automatically creates an attachment page for it. Since these attachment pages are regular HTML pages, they have their own canonical URLs pointing to themselves.
From an SEO perspective, indexing image attachment pages usually doesn’t provide much value, as they contain very little content besides the image. That’s why Rank Math includes an option to handle them properly. You can redirect attachment pages to the parent post or page where the image is used by going to:
Rank Math → General Settings → Links → Redirect Attachments
This way, search engines will focus on the main content instead of thin attachment pages, preventing the kind of indexing issues you’ve noticed in Google Search Console.
We recommend enabling this setting unless you have a specific use case where you want attachment pages indexed.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any other questions.
I already had the media attachments redirected to their corresponding post
Hello,
Please note that Canonical tags cannot be added to attachment files like PDFs, images, and videos.
They can only be added to HTML web pages, and it is completely fine if Google Search Console cannot detect a canonical on your PDF URLs as well.
On the other hand, when you upload media like images or PDFs to a post, an attachment page is automatically created.
The attachment page for them is also the origin URL you want to redirect from.
Looking forward to helping you.
