Pages competing for the same search
Searches for which two or more of your pages show up, each with real impressions. Searches on your own brand are left out. Two pages splitting one search usually both rank worse than one clear page would; the search engine keeps swapping them.
WarningGSC-004 · On-page · checked once for the whole site
Where it usually comes from
A blog post and a category written about the same thing, two filters of one listing left indexable, or an old page kept alongside its replacement.
This check needs the site’s traffic from Google Search Console. It runs only when the owner has connected it; without it, the audit leaves it out rather than guess.
How to fix it
- Decide which page should answer the search — usually the one that converts, or the more complete one.
- Make the other page about something else, or merge it into the first and redirect it with a 301.
- Link from the weaker page to the chosen one with the search in the link text.
How to check it yourself
In Search Console, open Performance, filter on the search, then switch to the Pages tab: more than one page with real impressions is the sign.
What it looks like in a report
Warning For the search "black leather boots", 2 of your pages show up: /boots/black-leather (position 7.4) and /blog/how-to-choose-boots (position 13.1).
The product and the guide answer the same search; the guide should send its readers to the product, not stand in its place. (An example shop; the numbers are illustrative.)
How the audit counts it
GSC-004 is a warning in the on-page category, and weighs moderately in that category’s score. It is a fact about the site as a whole, so it is reported once, not once per page.
If the finding is deliberate on your site, it can be accepted as intentional in the report. It then leaves the list and the score, and comes back on its own if what it shows changes.
Other on-page checks
- Many impressions, very few clicks · GSC-001
- Close to the first page · GSC-002
- Page with traffic, without a canonical or with noindex · GSC-003
- Title missing · ONPAGE-001
- Title too long · ONPAGE-002
- Title too short · ONPAGE-003
- Meta description missing · ONPAGE-004
- Meta description outside the useful range · ONPAGE-005
- H1 missing · ONPAGE-006
- Several H1 elements · ONPAGE-007
- Skipped heading level · ONPAGE-008
- lang attribute missing · ONPAGE-009
- meta viewport missing · ONPAGE-010
Find it on your site
A Trakis audit runs this check and the other 65 on your site, and tells you on how many pages each one sits. Or go back to all the rules.