Canonical link errors

This report lists pages with canonical link errors.

Why you should avoid canonical link errors:

Canonical tags signal to search engines like Google that the linked URL is the "original" version of the page and should be indexed.

However, if this URL is inaccessible or, for example, a page has multiple canonical tags, you make it difficult for search engines to index your content correctly.

You should therefore make sure that canonical links are always clear and that the linked pages do not have any technical problems.

What the notes in the "Canonical link with issues" column mean:

• Problematic status code: The canonical link points to a URL that returns a problematic HTTP status code (e.g. 404 error). You can find an overview of the meaning and the causes of the various HTTP status codes here.
• Broken target: The canonical link points to a "broken" or wrong target, such as an image file instead of an HTML page.
• Canonical link markup is empty: There is no URL in the canonical tag for this page.
• Multiple canonical links: The page has more than one canonical tag, which sends conflicting signals to search engines.
• Canonical link to a redirect: The URL linked in the canonical tag redirects to another URL.
• External domain: The URL in the canonical tag is located on an external domain. External canonical links should only be used in exceptional cases and only if there is a good reason to do this.

How to use canonical links correctly:

• Every page should have a canonical link pointing to either the original content or the page itself.
• There should be only one unique canonical link for each page.
• The URL in the canonical tag should be an accessible page that has no technical errors or redirects.

You can find more information about canonical links in our wiki.