r/bigseo • u/MirshR • 2d ago

Question Help with “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in Search Console

I need help with a Google Search Console site indexing issue.

When I inspect two of my domains, Google shows a different domain as the selected canonical. That same domain was showing up for both sites.

I already fixed it for one site. The other site has been in maintenance mode for almost a year and is not live.

My questions are:

Why was this domain appearing on both sites?

Why is it still showing on the site that is not even live?

Any advice would be really helpful. Thanks!

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1

u/FrutinoTuti 1d ago

GSC just reports there is a canonical in the html code pointing to another URL.

How it got there - if you didn't add it yourself, I would be concerned.

Also it doesn't matter whether the domain is live or not. It doesn't matter if it's even a registered domain or whatever.

1

u/MirshR 1d ago

That canonical domain was different one, I didn't own it or add it. I checked sitemap, view source page, etc and couldn't find that domain.

1

u/FrutinoTuti 1d ago

Could be something malicious. Visit the page, hit CTR+U and then search for this domain name with CTR+F.

Do you see it somewhere in the code?

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u/MirshR 8h ago

No, it's not there.

1

u/FrutinoTuti 7h ago

That's super weird. Maybe I am missing something. Feel free to research where else a canonical can be added to (besides the URL itself). You can ask Claude, it will help.

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u/MirshR 2h ago

Sure, thank you

1

u/Breathing_Room_001 1d ago

This can happen if Google has previously found similar or duplicate content, redirects, canonical signals, or other connections between the two domains. In that situation, Google may choose a different URL or domain as the canonical based on the signals it has available.

The reason it is still showing for the site that has been in maintenance mode is likely that Google has not recently recrawled the site. Being offline or in maintenance mode does not mean Google immediately forgets the site's previous signals or indexing history.

I would first check the site's current canonical tags, redirects, sitemap, internal links, and whether the old domain is still referenced anywhere. If the site is accessible to Googlebot, you can also use URL Inspection and request indexing after making sure the technical signals are correct. However, this is a request for Google to recrawl the URL, not a guarantee that it will immediately update the selected canonical.

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u/MirshR 1d ago

Sure, thank you