This notification means that the canonical URL and AMP pages aren’t linked correctly. Canonical tag, which aims to inform the search engine that a particular URL is the primary copy of the page, may be missing.
What Does “Canonical URL and AMP Pages Issue” Mean?
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) is a faster and more convenient way to boost user experience. When people use the search engine, AMP makes websites more accessible and mobile than common HTML.
Google Search Console Help provides a full list of possible issues that may affect an AMP page.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7478053?hl=en
Canonical issues regularly happen to the AMP framework. They occur when the canonical tags are missing and don’t link to the default URL. Fortunately, these errors can be easily detected and solved.
What triggers this issue?
Duplicating happens because a website may have several URLs representing the same content. The search engine perceives each address as a new one, even though the pages are identical. These duplicates normally exist because of several variations of the same page, for example, created for mobile and desktop platforms. Sometimes such errors occur due to settings failures.
The problem normally happens because AMP may not be referring to the canonical URL. If it’s stand-alone, it should be referring to itself.
How to check the issue?
To verify if you have any AMP issues, including wrong or missing canonical tag, use AMP Status Report tool provided by Google’s Help Center. Any problems occurring to your AMP can be reported or even prevented. It also can confirm that you are not experiencing problems.
Detect not only AMP Page URL missing a canonical tag but also other kind of technical problem on your site!
Crawl your site and find out all kind of issues that can hart your users or your website SEO.
You may watch a comprehensive video training by Daniel Waisberg to learn how to use Google Search Console to control the occurrence of any error related to AMP.
Also, you can use our convenient tool that detects pages with missing canonical to react if necessary.
Why is this important?
You shouldn’t underrate the canonical issues. The search engine looks for the default version of any page to provide the right redirection. If this initial version is not set or there are problems with identifying it, the search engine may simply choose the wrong URL to be the initial one.
Canonical issues could make the search engine consider your AMP page invalid. It will result in the loss of proper indexing or even exclusion from search engine results.
How to fix the issue?
If you’ve faced a canonical issue with your AMP and are looking for solutions, here is a brief guide to finding out how to handle it.
- Add the canonical page to the AMP page.
- Provide a clear connection linking AMP and non-AMP pages.
- Make sure that the non-AMP page redirects to itself.
If your AMP page is stand-alone, make sure it is self-referential.
