ObservationsLocal landing pages
A location page had no title and told Google the homepage was the real page
In short
The page for the town where the restaurant actually is had been quietly removed from Google by its own settings.
What I did
One location page had no title tag. Its canonical tag pointed to the homepage, and it was left out of the sitemap. Together these told Google to ignore it. I added a title, pointed the canonical at the page itself, and put it back in the sitemap.
Where
A restaurant website with several location pages, August 2026
What changed
The page now has its own title, a canonical tag that points to itself, and a place in the sitemap.
Did it work
It worked
What you should do
Check the canonical tag on each of your location pages. Each one should point to its own address, never to the homepage.
How long it took
Five minutes once I found it
A canonical tag is one line in the page code. It tells Google which address is the main version of a page.
Why it matters
This was the page for the town where the restaurant is based, so it was the most important local page on the site. Its canonical tag said the real page was the homepage. Google usually follows that and stops showing the page.
The missing title made it worse. Even if Google showed the page, it had no proper heading to show in the results.
How to check your own site
- Open the page, press Ctrl+U to view the source, and search for
canonical. The address after it should be the page itself. - Check the page has its own title tag.
- In Search Console, use URL Inspection. It shows which page Google has chosen as the main one.
At a glance
ResultIt worked
Effort to copyFive minute fix
Type of businessRestaurant and food
SubjectLocal landing pages
0title tags on the page before
1line of code that hid the page from Google
5 minutesto fix once found
What this changed in how I work
I now check canonical tags on location pages first. One wrong line can remove your most important local page, and no error will tell you.
End of Lab entry No. 002