On Sunday I reported about a canonical URL issue with Google that may have caused major turbulence with the Google search results last week. Well, Google said they need examples to investigate.
In short, there seemed to have been a possible bug with Google Search where it was showing the wrong URLs for pieces of content across the web last week. I can't imagine it was a very widespread issue but it did seem to impact a number of publishers.
It may have been the reason for that unconfirmed Google update on the 23rd. Anyway, I wrote about the situation over here and it seems Google does not have enough information to dig in.
Danny Sullivan from Google wrote on Twitter "Just FYI, we'll look into these reports, but to date, I've only seen one site actually give their domain name and an example. If others want to share actual examples of where they see this in Search Console, we can forward those along."
Just FYI, we'll look into these reports, but to date, I've only seen one site actually give their domain name and an example. If others want to share actual examples of where they see this in Search Console, we can forward those along cc: @JohnMu
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 28, 2020
John Mueller said something similar:
Can you give me some examples? Thanks!
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) September 28, 2020
So send both of them, or maybe just John, examples of this issue.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Google has now confirmed this as an indexing issue with mobile-indexing and canonicalization.