Hello, I’m having trouble with google search console.
I’m not very technical, so I don’t understand a lot of computer talk.
After getting my site up on google search console and waiting for it to do its work. I went back and over half my pages are not indexed. I have apx 1,100 pages total. Some I looked into and are old versions of a product, or collections that don’t exist anymore. So thats fine I can just leave those alone.
My issue is the 403 pages that have Alternate page with proper canonical tag. Some pages seem to be correct like a different variation on a product.
However I have some listings I have issues with.
Some products are being listed as others, see the screen shot. A wood stove is being confused with a wood pellet bbq.
Look for the “Search engine listing preview” section and click “Edit website SEO”. check your every product config , check the URL and handle at the bottom Make sure it’s unique to this product .
check whether you have the issue is probably hardcoded in your theme.
like this code : <link rel="canonical" href="https://maierhardware.com/products/cast-iron-wood-stove" /> you should delele this line
The screenshot you’ve shared is not very informative.
It does not show the actual URL in question.
It only lists referring page - a page where this ULR was discovered. So, no, it does not mix one with another.
Looks like it is one of the “recommended products” URLs on the “Traeger Ranger” product page which points to the “Cast Iron Wood Stove” page.
A link like: https://maierhardware.com/products/cast-iron-wood-stove?pr_prod_strat=e5_desc&pr_rec_id=fa1645412&pr_rec_pid=7831802544357&pr_ref_pid=7831815061733&pr_seq=uniform
Which ultimaltey points to the same https://maierhardware.com/products/cast-iron-wood-stove page.
This is not an error
It is just notification from Google – "listen, when looking at your Trager Ranger page I’ve discovered this link, but it points to a page on your site which is already indexed, so I would not put this exact URL into my index".
This is what you have canonicals are for.
It is absolutely fine as long as your canonical pages are indexed (and this one is.)
The only drawback of these “extra” URLs is that they consume crawl budget, which is bad, but it’s already late to try fixing this – it’s already consumed.
Unfortunately, there is no good way to tell Google to not try to crawl these URLs.
I ran into a similar mess where Search Console looked like it was mixing products, and it was honestly stressful to sort through. From your example, it sounds like you’re not imagining it and some canonical signals are genuinely off. You’re already doing the right thing by separating old/expected exclusions from the weird ones. Once those obvious mismatches get cleaned up, indexing usually starts looking a lot less chaotic.
First, make sure the canonical tag is set sitewide in your Shopify theme. This helps search engines understand the main URL for each page.
This is usually added in theme.liquid:
< link rel=“canonical” href=“{{ canonical_url }}”>
Alternate page with proper canonical tag usually means Google found similar or duplicate URLs and decided to index only one version.
A couple things to check :
Check the canonical tag
Make sure each product points to its own URL, not another product.
If a product is pointing to the wrong canonical URL, Google may index the wrong page (like your wood stove showing as the pellet BBQ).
Look for duplicate URLs
Sometimes the same product exists under both product URLs and collection URLs, which can confuse indexing.
Hi @Mhardware, In short: You can safely ignore this notification.
It’s just Google being transparent about how it found a link:
What’s happening: Google found a link to the “Cast Iron Wood Stove” while crawling your “Traeger Ranger” page (likely in a “Recommended Products” section).
Why it’s “Excluded”: The link has extra tracking code at the end. Google recognizes that this is just a duplicate of a page it has already indexed, so it’s choosing to ignore the version with the long URL.
Is this bad? No. Your main page is indexed correctly. This “exclusion” is actually Google doing its job by cleaning up duplicates using your canonical tags.
The only downside is Crawl Budget. Google spent time looking at these extra links instead of discovering new ones. However, once Google has seen them, the “damage” is done, and there’s no easy way to stop it from happening with these types of automated product links.
From your screenshot, the issue isn’t that Google is confusing the products—it’s that the canonical tag on the BBQ page appears to point to the wood stove page. Since Google agrees with that canonical, it only indexes the wood stove page.
You should check whether an SEO app or a theme customization is overriding your canonical tags. Each product should normally have a self-referencing canonical URL.
If you’re on Shopify, a tool like SearchPie: SEO, Speed & Schema can help audit canonical tags and other technical SEO issues across your store, so you don’t have to check hundreds of pages manually.
Small clarification here: in Search Console, that screen often shows the referring page where Google found the URL, not necessarily the product Google thinks it should replace it with.
I’d first open the exact excluded URL from GSC, view source, and check whether its canonical points back to the clean version of the same product. If it does, this is mostly normal Shopify duplicate-URL noise from recommendations/tracking params. If it points to a totally different product, then look for an SEO app or theme edit overriding {{ canonical_url }}.
