Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user

[wikibum]

I have a few pages with this error in Google Search Console (Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user). When I check the canonical that they prefer for a specific page - it shows me a weird URL that shouldn't exist but does. ALL the pages showing in this error are category pages too, which is weird.

For example. I get an error on a category page that looks like this.

Actual category page URL is: /category/reviews/tennis-products/. (this is the live URL)
Their preferred canonical is: /category/reviews/tennis/.

What is weird is that this URL /category/reviews/tennis/ doesn't exist. I don't have that category setup, nor can I find where the URL is being generated from.

It is also weird because the title of that category page says something like "Tennis Guide", which is an entirely different category all together, which does exist but has a different URL. /category/guides/tennis/

Basically, they prefer a URL that shouldn't exist but does and that URL is showing a title for a different category that exists lol

Any idea why that would be happening?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Google has a lot of screwy crap going on with canonicals and title rewriting for sure. I'm not aware of any way to suggest to them or enforce the correct behavior. The best move, if you aren't already doing it (Yoast adds this functionality, for instance) is to make every post include itself as the self-referencing canonical. Every page should explicitly state that it, itself, is the correct canonical.

Beyond this, as ridiculous as it is, I'd look at possibly 301 redirecting the wrong non-existent URLs to the correct one, especially if it's costing you money, and hope Google sorts itself out.

 

[wikibum]

For sure. I think Wordpress native functionality is making multiple URLs for the same category page. When I check the canonical on the wrong URL, it actually states the correct canonical, but Google decides to choose another one.

This only happens on category pages, not posts/pages/articles, etc.. so I am not worried about it too much. I was thinking of making redirects like you said and also state the canonical in the advanced setting in Yoast as well. I will let you know what happens.

I did have a dev look at everything and he said it might the PHP version but I don't think so. I have the most stable PHP version setup.

Anyway, thanks for the tip! Appreciate it.