Canonical tags which redirect issue occurs if the canonical link points to a redirect URL.
What Does “Canonical Tags Which Redirect Issue” Mean?
Canonical shows the search engine robot the priority page to be indexed and listed in the search database. The Canonical attribute itself is not a redirect.
A 301 redirect is the best solution to the perceived problems of specifying the canonical tag for a particular URL. Redirect should be used when identical URLs of the same page appear in the search engine database.
Moreover, use redirect when you know that the problem may occur after a domain change or site migration to another platform.
Additionally, check out Google’s webmaster help for more information on duplicate URLs.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/consolidate-duplicate-urls?hl=en
What triggers this issue?
This problem affects pages where the canonical link points to a redirect URL.
There is another option. When search engine robots find multiple URLs pointing to the same page, they may not select the priority page and simply ignore that address. The search engine may perceive the copies as duplicate content.
Duplicates negatively affect search engine rankings. The site may lose a part of search traffic.
How to check the issue?
In most cases, search engines try to select the perfect match for a particular search query. However, if these systems cannot determine the best match from the options found, the search engines may not return to crawl any of them. Use the crawler to detect this issue.
Find out not only the information about Canonical pointing to redirect, but also the presence of technical errors on it!
Conduct a full audit to find out and fix all the site level and page level issues on your website.
Here is a useful video in which John Mueller discusses how Google Search chooses a canonical URL from similar or duplicate pages.
Why is this important?
Canonical tags exist to solve the problem of duplicate content. If you need multiple pages with the same or similar content, you must choose the highest-priority, so-called canonical version.
If you have the wrong tag, search engines may ignore the instructions and choose a different URL based on other factors.
How to fix the issue?
Canonical pages must be URLs that return an answer code of 200 (OK). It means that the content on such a page will be accessible to both users and search engines.
To fix this error, you must replace the redirect URL with the canonical tag on the page with the version of the page that returns server response code 200 (OK). Keep in mind that the page will be crawlable when you do this and will appear in the search engine index.
Specify the canonical page in one of the following ways:
- rel = canonical tag in the recurring page code.
- rel = canonical in the HTTP response of your page.
