We identified and fixed a URL canonicalization issue that caused over 208,000 pages to show as redirects in Google Search Console. A new Canonical Location Service now ensures every race and location page has one definitive URL.

What Happened

Google Search Console flagged 208K pages as redirect pages — meaning Google was finding multiple URLs that all pointed to the same content. This dilutes SEO authority and wastes crawl budget, making it harder for your race pages to rank in search results.

How We Fixed It

  • Canonical Location Service — A new single source of truth that determines the correct canonical URL for every location on RaceMob. Cities with 100K+ population get their own pages; smaller cities redirect to their parent region.
  • Metro Area Consolidation — Child metro areas now properly redirect to their parent combined metro, eliminating duplicate content across overlapping geographic regions.
  • Dynamic Sitemap — The sitemap now loads canonical locations dynamically instead of using hardcoded lists, so it always stays in sync with the canonical rules.
  • Data Fix Tasks — Automated tasks corrected corrupt slugs, refreshed canonical URLs, and re-linked orphaned location records.
The result: cleaner URLs, no more redirect chains, and better use of Google's crawl budget — which means your race pages should start ranking better over the coming weeks.