Alternate page with proper canonical tag

The status is in the Page indexing report, under Why pages aren’t indexed. Google’s help page says the page is marked as an alternate of another page, points correctly to that canonical page, and the canonical is indexed: “there is nothing you need to do”.

A canonical is the one address Google keeps when the same content is reachable at several. This page carries a rel="canonical" link naming another address, and Google took the hint. The copy stays out of results; the address it names is shown, with the links and signals of its copies added to it.

Most of the addresses in this report are copies nobody meant to publish. Look at a sample and match it to a row:

• Click a URL in the report and choose Inspect URL. Under Page indexing, User-declared canonical and Google-selected canonical should name the same address: the one you want people to land on.
• Open the canonical address itself. It should be the page you want people to reach: the full product, not page 1 of a list; the same language, not the English version of a French page.
• Switch the report’s filter to All submitted pages. An address here that is also in your sitemap means the sitemap lists copies; it should list only the canonical addresses.

If the declared canonical is yours but Google picked another address, the page is in a different status: “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user”. If the page declares nothing, it is Duplicate without user-selected canonical.

• A canonical that names another page on a page you want found. A theme or plugin setting, a copied template, or a canonical hard-coded to the home page. Trakis lists every page whose canonical names another address (INDEX-004).
• A relative canonical. href="/shoes/" resolves against whatever address the page was loaded from, which breaks on a second host or behind a base tag (INDEX-005).
• A sitemap that lists the copies. Google reads the sitemap as a weak signal of which addresses are canonical, so listing the alternates contradicts your own tags (CRAWL-010).
• Session IDs in the address. A canonical on each copy keeps them out of search, and they all land here; leaving the ID out of the address keeps them from being made at all (CRAWL-005).

• Give every page you want found a canonical that names itself, as a full address: <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/shoes/">. In a template, build it from the page’s own address, not a fixed value.
• Paginated lists: page 2 names page 2, page 3 names page 3.
• Language versions: each one names itself, and hreflang tells Google they are translations of each other.
• List only canonical addresses in the sitemap, and link to them, not their copies, from your own pages.
• Don’t use robots.txt or noindex to pick a canonical. Google’s canonical guide says not to: robots.txt stops Google reading the copy, and noindex removes the page from search altogether.

Then inspect the most important fixed pages and use Request indexing, which has a quota. Google’s troubleshooting guide says pages can stay grouped as duplicates for up to two weeks, so the report changes over days, not at once.

Is it an error? No. When the canonical is the page you want, Google says there is nothing to do.

Why does the number keep growing? New copies keep appearing: ads and social posts add tracking parameters, filters add sort orders, new products add new paths. It is fine as long as each one names the right page.

Will it hurt my rankings? Not by itself. The canonical page ranks with its copies’ signals added to it.

Should I remove the canonical tag to get these pages indexed? No. Without it they become “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” and Google picks an address itself, perhaps a worse one.

What if a page I want indexed is on the list? Its canonical names another page. Change it to name itself, then inspect it and request indexing.

The Trakis audit reads the canonical of every page it crawls: pages that name another address, relative canonicals, sitemaps that list the wrong URLs. It counts each problem once, with the pages it covers. Create a free account and add your site, or see every Search Console status, explained.