The canonical URL points at a different page
What this check looks for
This page tells search engines that a different URL is the one to index. That is often exactly right — it is how duplicate versions of a page are consolidated — so this is reported for you to confirm, not as a fault.
Why it matters
When it is intentional, this is the mechanism working. When it is not — a template that hard-codes one URL for every page, a staging canonical that shipped — it removes the page from search results as effectively as a noindex would, and it is much harder to notice.
What it costs your score
This check never deducts. It reports a fact — or reports that something could not be verified — and is shown on the report without moving the score.
- Severity
- info
- Default confidence
- confirmed
- Status when triggered
- info
- Deduction
- 0 points
- Family cap
- none
- Category
- SEO
- Module
- Seo audit
- Fix owned by
- user
- In the ruleset since
- 2026.09
Technical detail
This page is served at ‹url› and declares ‹canonical› as canonical.
This deducts nothing, because it is the correct configuration for several ordinary cases: a printable or AMP variant pointing at the main page, a syndicated copy pointing at the original, a filtered or sorted listing pointing at the unfiltered one.
What to check is that the target is the page you meant, and that it is not the *same* URL for every page on the site — a hard-coded canonical in a shared template points every page at one, and silently removes the rest from search. Comparing this finding across two or three pages of the site is the quickest way to tell.
The canonical target should also return 200. A canonical pointing at a URL that redirects makes search engines work out the destination for themselves, and they may reach a different conclusion.
Standards and references
Test this on your domain
Run the check that produces this finding, on its own, against any domain.
Other seo audit checks
- The page declares more than one canonical URL
- The canonical URL cannot be used
- The page declares no canonical URL
- The page has no h1 heading
- The heading levels skip a level
- The page has more than one h1
- An hreflang annotation is not valid
- The hreflang set does not include this page
- The page's declared language is not a well-formed language tag
- The page does not declare what language it is written in
- Images on the page have no alt attribute
- robots.txt blocks this page from being crawled