Duplicate without user-selected canonical means Google found two or more near-identical addresses, saw no canonical tag naming the preferred one, and picked a different address than this one to index. Alternate page with proper canonical tag is the healthy version: the page points to its preferred address, which is indexed, so nothing needs doing.
| Status | What happened | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Alternate page with proper canonical tag | This page names another page as canonical, and Google agrees | None |
| Duplicate without user-selected canonical | No canonical given; Google chose another URL | Add canonical tags or redirect |
| Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user | You named one page; Google preferred another | Check the pages really are the same, align your signals |
Updated
A canonical tag is one line in the head of a page saying which address is the main copy. Shops and blogs make duplicates without meaning to: tracking parameters, http and https, with and without www, print pages and product variants. Paste a page's HTML into the checker to see whether its canonical follows Google's rules.
Page source (HTML)
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Blue stoneware mug</title>
<link rel="canonical" href="/mugs/blue-mug">
</head>
<body>...</body>
</html>Address of this page: https://shop.example.com/mugs/blue-mug
Checked in your browser from the text you paste. The checker does not fetch your site.
Use the link element for web pages. For files such as PDFs, where there is no head to edit, Google accepts the same signal as an HTTP Link header.
Placed on every version of the page, including the preferred one.
<head>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://shop.example.com/mugs/blue-mug">
</head>Sent by the server with the file. The address goes inside angle brackets.
Link: <https://www.example.com/price-list.pdf>; rel="canonical"Google's duplicate URL guide ranks the signals: a redirect is a strong signal, a rel=canonical link is a strong signal, and listing a URL in a sitemap is a weak one. Google weighs these along with other clues, such as a preference for HTTPS over HTTP.
Because the tag is a signal and not an order, Google can still choose differently. That is what the Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user status means.
Ad and email links add parameters like ?utm_source=newsletter. Online shops reach the same product through several category paths. A site may answer on both www and the bare domain. Each one is a separate address to a crawler, even though a visitor sees the same page.
Fix the source when you can: one redirect from the bare domain to www (or the reverse), and a canonical tag on every template that strips parameters back to the clean address.
No. Google's help describes this page as correctly pointing to the canonical page, which is indexed, so there is nothing to do. It appears in the not indexed list only because the alternate copy itself is not shown in results.
Not always. If Google picked the address you would have picked, results look the same either way. It becomes a problem when Google indexes a version with tracking parameters or an old path instead of your clean one.
Google's guide says to use absolute paths rather than relative ones. Write the full address including https and the domain.
No. Google only accepts the link element when it appears in the head section of the HTML. Some plugins and page builders inject it lower down, which makes it invisible to Google.
Google does not recommend noindex for choosing a canonical, and says not to use robots.txt or the URL removal tool for it either. A canonical tag or a redirect is the right signal.
Related: Canonical tag checker, Crawled - currently not indexed, On-page SEO checklist, Redirect checker, Google Search Console guide.
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