Canonicals & duplicates

Canonical points at a page that canonicalises somewhere else

One of the 136 checks Lala SEO runs on every page of a site in a free audit.

How serious: Worth fixing. Weakens how Google reads or shows the page. Fix after the serious ones.
Based on: Google's own documentation

What is wrong

Your site has a page with a canonical tag that points to a second page, but that second page itself has a canonical tag pointing somewhere else entirely. This creates a chain rather than a direct path, like giving someone directions to a shop, only for that shop to direct them elsewhere again.

Why it costs you

Google has to follow this chain to find the final destination page. It wastes crawl budget—the time Google spends visiting your site—on extra steps that should not be necessary. Worse, if Google does not follow the chain all the way, it might index the wrong version of your content or fail to consolidate duplicates properly, leaving your pages scattered across search results instead of grouped under one canonical URL.

How to fix it

Find the page with the intermediate canonical tag and update it. Instead of pointing to the second page, make it point directly to the final destination page that the second page canonicalises to. This is a one-line fix in the canonical link element in the page's HTML head section. If multiple pages have this problem, make the change in your page template so every page bypasses the chain and points straight to the canonical source.

What the audit tests

The page a canonical points to does not itself point somewhere else

Check your site

Run a free audit of up to 300 pages. No card needed.

Start a free audit

Or check a single address with the free tool.

Other canonicals & duplicates checks

All 136 checks