Search Console: User-Declared Canonical Not Selected

Google has chosen to index a different URL to the one declared by the user in the HTML or HTTP Header.

Canonicals are hints rather than directives.

Sometimes Google does a great job of selecting the canonical version, other times it’s less than ideal.

How to Analyse in the SEO Spider

View URLs with this issue in the ‘Search Console’ tab and ‘User-Declared Canonical Not Selected’ filter, and export all URLs using the ‘Export’ button.

To populate this filter the Google Search Console API must be connected via ‘Config > API Access > Google Search Console’ and ‘Enable URL Inspection’ selected under the ‘URL Inspection’ tab.

The ‘User-Declared Canonical’ column details the canonical specified via the site, and the ‘Google-Selected Canonical’ column highlights the URL Google has chosen as the canonical URL.

What Triggers This Issue

This issue is triggered when Google, in its indexing process, chooses to index a different URL than the one declared as the canonical by the user in the HTML or HTTP Header.

How To Fix

Review which URLs Google has chosen to index instead of the canonical URL declared.

Consider whether this is accurate and if any consolidation, updating of canonicals, internal links or XML Sitemaps are necessary.