Canonicals & duplicates

The site answers on more than one address

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

How serious: Serious. Can stop pages from appearing in Google, or from working for visitors. Fix these first.
Based on: Industry standard: Google does not document this one, so the check follows established practice.

What is wrong

Your website is accessible from more than one web address. For example, visitors might reach your site via www.example.com and also via example.com, or via http and https versions. Search engines treat each address as a separate website, even though they show the same pages.

Why it costs you

This splits your search visibility across multiple addresses. When Google indexes your site under different addresses, your ranking authority gets divided between them instead of concentrated in 1 place. Visitors and search engines may also become confused about which version is the real one, leading to indexing problems and lost search traffic.

How to fix it

Pick 1 canonical address for your site and set up 301 redirects on your web server to send all other versions to it. For instance, if you choose www.example.com as your main address, redirect example.com, http versions, and any other variants to point there. This tells Google which address is the official one and consolidates all your ranking power in that single location. Your hosting control panel or web server configuration (often the .htaccess file for Apache servers) is where you set up these redirects.

What the audit tests

All four addresses (http/https, with/without www) end up at one address

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Other canonicals & duplicates checks

All 136 checks