Canonical to another page
Pages whose canonical points at a different page. The page tells search engines "index that other page instead of me". Right for true duplicates, wrong when it comes from a template that points every page at the home page or at page one of a list.
WarningINDEX-004 · Indexation · checked on every page
Where it usually comes from
Templates that copy the canonical of the first page of a list to every page, or of a parent product to every variant — or a canonical hard-coded to the home page.
How to fix it
- Open the page and the address its canonical names: are they really the same content?
- If not, make the canonical point at the page itself.
How to check it yourself
Open the page source, copy the canonical address and open it: if it shows different content from the page you started on, the canonical is wrong.
What it looks like in a report
Warning The canonical points to another page. · evidence: /shoes?page=2 → /shoes
Page 2 of a list tells search engines to index page 1 instead, so the products only listed on page 2 lose their path in. (An example shop; the numbers are illustrative.)
How the audit counts it
INDEX-004 is a warning in the indexation category, and weighs moderately in that category’s score. When it appears on many pages built from the same template, the report shows it once, with the number of pages it covers — because one change in the template fixes all of them.
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 indexation checks
- meta robots noindex · INDEX-001
- X-Robots-Tag noindex header · INDEX-002
- Canonical missing · INDEX-003
- Relative canonical · INDEX-005
- The domain is a mirror of another domain · INDEX-006
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.