struggling with Alternate page with proper canonical tag

#936903
  • Resolved Quilts By Taylor

    4 months, 1 week ago

    Rank Math free

    hello, I’m a week into using Rank Math. Its been really helping me update 7 years of deleted posts/ products and old broken links. I’ve been re directing all that I can that are current. things were going good, and I was getting some traction. But today my search engine referral took a huge nose dive. My Blog posts are not indexing because of canonical tag. Which I admit, don’t fully understand. I’ve watched the videos on several of the indexing issues. I know more now than 3 days ago. Is it normal for the WP sitemap Index stuff to be coming back as 404? I haven’t redirected any of those 404. But now Search counsel says sitemap wasn’t fetchable. My search referrals went in the dirt.
    To add to my complexity, the items I sell are coming up as duplicates because of attributes. or as I believe~~~ showing me having duplicate content/products. I sell 4 size options, so each product represent 4 products to google? and how do I stop that from being considered duplicate? or the attributes being messed up.
    Those attributes are coming up in the 404 also. I think I need help. In fact I know I need help, is it something I’ve done? or I changed in the settings may have caused it? Is it normal for all blog posts to not get indexed? am I trying to fix something thats not broken>? How can I get my post to be not linked all back to the category and stand alone in search? ( I have 150 blog posts showing all the context of the making of each of my products, Ive connected the blog posts to the product pages.
    I dont know but I have concerns about the sitemap message that is new.
    this is what my Search Counsel page says about it.
    /sitemap_index.xml Unknown Dec 22, 2024 Couldn’t fetch 0 0
    /sitemap.xml Sitemap index Dec 7, 2024 Dec 13, 2024 Success 235 0
    /sitemap.xml. Sitemap Oct 23, 2017 Dec 12, 2024 1 error 0 0

    the couldnt fetch was from today/ dec 22<
    Is Rank Math taking that over and that its ok to be disconnecting from Woo Commerce sitemap? anyway for you to help me check if my setting are right for what Im trying to do?
    for context…. I didnt know changing the slug , changes the url. And I just spent the last month editing every page and post…. I have a lot of redirects now.
    anyhoo. thats what Im struggling with.
    Thank you in advance,

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Jeremy

    4 months, 1 week ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for your query and we are so sorry about the trouble this must have caused.

    1. Blog posts that aren’t indexing because of Canonical URLs.

    Please share some of the affected URLs here so we can inspect it from our end.

    2. Sitemap with “Couldn’t fetch” issue

    Please follow this guide to help you with your issue: https://rankmath.com/kb/couldnt-fetch-error-google-search-console/

    3. Duplicate pages because of the attributes URLs

    Attribute pages are dynamically generated pages that may contain the same content as the primary page hence the “duplicate” issue you’ve encountered. In most cases, Rank Math will automatically set the correct canonical URL to point it to the main or primary page. For us to confirm further, please share some of the affected URLs here.

    Meanwhile, to fix this, we just need to instruct Google not to crawl these attribute URLs by modifying your Robots.txt. Here is an example robots.txt rule you have to add to your robots.txt file.

    User-Agent: *
Disallow: *?attribute_size=*
Disallow: *?attribute_color=*
Disallow: *?attribute_flavor=*
Disallow: *?attribute_storage-options=*

    Here’s how you edit your robots.txt in Rank Math plugin: https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-edit-robots-txt-with-rank-math/

    4. 404 pages including attributes

    If Google keeps discovering these pages, fixing the sitemap should help solve this.

    5. Posts/pages not indexing in general

    Please refer to this guide to help you with your indexing concerns: https://rankmath.com/kb/google-index/

    Looking forward to helping you.

    Quilts By Taylor

    4 months, 1 week ago

    Rank Math free

    Ok, so been researching. contacted my host about editing the robot txt file. with the attribute issues. been changing titles so to not have confusion in duplicate data/settings are all set to Index/
    but google still says its blocked. and actually rejected my manual entry.
    I’m watching all my WordPress site map data show up in 404.
    I dont know what or who to go to. as of today I have 0 impressions/ 0 referrals/ on search counsel, its like I dropped off. completely. never seen all zeros , ever.
    I allowed and dis allowed the robot txt and its still not working.
    what am I missing? I’m not overly able when it comes to coding fixes. changing the robot text was above my level. but I did do it. I didn’t ever have this issue until I started with Rank math. I thought it was all automatic.? no?

    Jeremy

    4 months ago

    Hello,

    1. The 404 errors and the “Couldn’t fetch” issue suggest there might be a caching issue or a conflict. Please clear your website cache (and server cache, if applicable), resubmit your sitemap in Google Search Console, and allow time for Google to reprocess it. Ensure only one active sitemap is submitted (likely /sitemap_index.xml).

    Here’s a guide you can follow: https://rankmath.com/kb/couldnt-fetch-error-google-search-console/

    2. For the robots.txt edits, ensure there are no syntax errors. You can also revert to the default robots.txt in Rank Math and let us configure attribute handling. Share your current robots.txt for us to review.

    3. If Google is flagging duplicate issues, verify your canonical URLs are set correctly in the Rank Math plugin under the Advanced tab of each page/post. Please share some affected URLs here so we can check.

    Looking forward to helping you.

    Quilts By Taylor

    4 months ago

    Rank Math free

    yes and no. I got the robot tet stuff figured out , but there are pages still being told no to index. ( canologial stuff. So I changed the perma link, after spending many days editing every post and porduct so I could tell what things were. I really think when I UN installed JetPack it did something crazy to all my keywords/ ended up in the URLs/. I had keywords in product descriptions. not sure how it happened, the titles were all just keyword. Hence why I couldnt get index.~? but thats what rank math has helped me fix. so Now I changed the perma link after all the editing.. anyway… im actively watching my 404.i may need to get back..

    Ike

    4 months ago

    Hello,

    Sure, let us know how this goes.

    Meanwhile, please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime if you have other questions to assist you further.

    Looking forward to helping you.

    Thank you.

    RankBot

    3 months ago

    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.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The ticket ‘struggling with Alternate page with proper canonical tag’ is closed to new replies.