Canonicals & duplicates

Canonical points to another domain

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 pages contain canonical tags that point to a different domain than the one the page lives on. A canonical tag is an instruction telling search engines which version of a page is the "official" one when duplicates exist. When that instruction points elsewhere, it creates confusion about which domain should rank.

Why it costs you

This costs you because Google may index and rank the other domain instead of yours. Visitors searching for your business might land on a competitor's site, a mirror site, or an old domain you no longer control. You lose the search visibility you are trying to build.

How to fix it

Check every page with a canonical tag and verify it points back to your own domain. If you use a page template or content management system, edit the template's canonical tag setting rather than fixing pages individually. The canonical tag should reference only URLs from your own domain, with the exception of intentional cases where you genuinely want another domain to be the preferred version—which is rare.

What the audit tests

The canonical tag points to the page's own domain, not another one

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Other canonicals & duplicates checks

All 136 checks