Sitemap lists URLs that are not canonical

What is wrong

Your sitemap includes URLs that you have marked as non-canonical elsewhere on your site. A canonical URL is your official version of a page—you use a canonical tag to tell search engines which version to prefer when multiple versions exist. If a URL appears in your sitemap but you have said it is not canonical, you are sending conflicting signals about which page matters.

Why it costs you

Google may crawl and index the non-canonical URLs from your sitemap instead of the versions you actually want ranked. This wastes crawl budget on pages you did not intend to promote, and dilutes authority across duplicate content. Visitors may land on the version you did not want indexed.

How to fix it

Check your sitemap file against the canonical tags on your pages. Remove any URL from the sitemap that has a canonical tag pointing elsewhere. You can edit your sitemap directly, or if you generate it with a plugin or tool, look for a setting that excludes non-canonical pages. If you have more than 400 affected URLs, focus on the highest-traffic pages first and regenerate the sitemap once you have made changes.