I’m encountering an issue with Google Search Console indexing on my website’s blog. I’m using Finsweet filter attributes to create a search bar that allows users to filter content by keywords. Also, I’ve set up a global canonical tag
The search bar itself functions as intended for all categories and pages. However, Google Search Console seems to be indexing content inconsistently. It shows results for specific pages within categories, seemingly at random, rather than indexing the entire blog section comprehensively.
This is how the attributes are set up:
I’ve also added a screenshot of the error that’s showing up
Has anyone else encountered a similar issue with Finsweet search bars, canonical tags, and Google Search Console indexing? Any advice on how to ensure complete and consistent indexing of all blog content?
The GSC notifications you’re getting are just saying that in Google’s opinion, the URL’s listed should probably be using a different canonical pointing to a different page, e.g. your /blog page directly.
Early this year Webflow made a change so that paginated pages contain paginated canonical URLs. I’m not sure why… probably in an effort to appease SEO auditing tools that were complaining. It didn’t seem to create any positive benefit that I can see… Google seems to think the original approach ( not including the querystring in the canonical ) is more appropriate for most sites.
The thing to understand is that querystrings are used in many ways- sometimes as an essential part of the path like /product?id=298347 where the page is useless without it. Other times querystring params are just a filtering mechanism or tracking mechanism and it’s the same page either way. Google can’t tell from the querystring alone, so it trusts you to tell it clearly with the canonical. It seems to notice when a bunch of pages on your site look very similar. You’re telling it “these are different pages” with the distinct canonicals, but Google is saying “urgh… I really don’t want to index 1000 nearly-identical pages…”
