Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
I’ve checked those filtered pages, and they are already set to noindex.
Since they are noindexed, Rank Math does not generate the canonical URL as Google will not discover them. That should be fine as well since they are prone to duplicate content as you have mentioned.
If they are still getting crawled, please clear your website’s cache and revalidate the issue in your Google Search Console account and give Google some time to recrawl your site.
Hope that helps.
Thank you.
ok fair enough…
I looed at what has been indexed in google, and I don’t really see a lot of “duplicate” pages, except for the “page 2, 3, etc” that Google is indexing. I understand these cannot be set to no-index, as othewise google will not index all my products. This mainly occurs on my product-category pages. See examples
https://www.watersportswarehouse.co.za/product-category/hydrofoil/wing-surfing/
https://www.watersportswarehouse.co.za/product-category/hydrofoil/wing-surfing/page/2/
https://www.watersportswarehouse.co.za/product-category/hydrofoil/wing-surfing/page/3/
Potentially this is giving duplicate content?
Can I set the canonical to refer to itself? Then google will follow the links, but not index them??
cheers, Bruce
Hello,
Please follow this guide to noindex paginated pages: https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-noindex-paginated-pages/
Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have questions.
Hi Nigel
Some questions
1.
If Rankmath does this
“Rank Math adds rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags for your paginated series as per Google’s guidelines that can help the search engines to understand the relationship between the individual URLs in a paginated series.”
Then why do I still have the /page/2, etc, etc..??
2. I’ve been told NOT to noindex paginated pages on product-category archives, because then google will not follow links on the page (Like all the products on the paginated pages). Or is this incorrect????
regards
Bruce
Hello,
1. The paginated pages are set as Index and even if there is a relation defined in the source code if a page has a self-referencing canonical URL and is set as Index, Google will index it and since the content on the pages is different, it shouldn’t cause a duplicate content issue.
2. Noindexing paginated pages will not stop Google from crawling and indexing the products listed there. Google stops following the links present on a page only when the page is set as Nofollow. Setting the page as Noindex will not prevent Google from following the URLs listed on the page.
Hope that helps. Let us know if you need any other assistance.
ok. Just to confirm. These are the steps I need to do..
1. In Rankmath. Titles & meta -> Misc Pages -> Turn on Noindex SubPages
2. In Rankmath. Titles & meta -> Misc Pages -> Turn on Noindex Paginated Single Page
Then I could also put a self referencing canonical into my Product- category pages. (Is this needed?)
Also, when I call a URL with a parameter, I don’t need to add any additional noindex parameters. i.e. my call will look like
KD Sports
Similarly on the menu side, when allocating a menu item to an item with a filter, I simply call the URL like
https://www.watersportswarehouse.co.za/product-category/inflatable-tubes/tubes/?wpf_filter_ride-capacity=5-person
does this all make sense?
cheers, Bruce
Hello,
1. If you have set them to noindex, then no need to set the canonical URL since they are not relevant and search engines will not index them.
2. I’ve checked the filtered pages, and their canonical URLs are already set to the actual page URL. In this case, you won’t need to add the noindex since search engines will read the original page via the canonical URL.
Hope that helps.
Thank you.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
