Learn how to fix the "Duplicate Google Chose Different Canonical Than User" issue quickly!
This Technical SEO-focused article should help resolve the Duplicate Google Chose Different Canonical Than User validation issue that appears in Google Search Console (GSC).
Table of Contents
This article relies on the WordPress Content Management System — the text below may be helpful when trying to understand what might be causing this issue, generally speaking.
Why the Duplicate Google Chose Different Canonical Than User validation issue happens
The Duplicate Google Chose Different Canonical Than User validation issue can happen when the URL to a page has changed, and the internal links pointing to the old URL have not been updated to point to the new URL.
Note that there could be other reasons that cause this problem to occur.
This article was updated on May 7, 2025.
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Steps to address the “Duplicate Google Chose Different Canonical Than User” issue
In this section we’ll cover how to remedy the “Duplicate Google Chose Different Canonical Than User” issue
Article Prerequisites
- WordPress Website with a page which is experiencing the Duplicate Google Chose Different Canonical Than User issue
- All In One SEO Plugin for WordPress (AIOSEO)
- Google Search Console
Step One: Verify that a page has failed validation in Google Search Console due to the “Duplicate Google Chose Different Canonical Than User” issue.
Navigate to the Google Search Console, Indexing, Pages and under “Why pages aren’t indexed” click on the row entitled “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user“.
Step Two: Update all internal links to point to the new URL.
We need to find every internal link on the website that is still pointing to the old URL and update it such that it points to the new URL.
WordPress users can consider using the Better Search Replace plugin to find target URLs that need to be changed.
Step Three: Validate the fix.
Smash the “Validate Fix” button in Google Search Console.
Step Four: Wait for Google to validate that the issue has been remedied.
After some time, Google will crawl the website and determine if this issue has been resolved.
Note that this process can take several days or much longer.
Once the validation completes you should receive an email indicating if it was successful or if issues still exist.
That’s it for this article — the conclusion follows.
Why you need to fix this problem
The following list provides some reasons why this problem needs to be addressed:
- Loss of search visibility for the intended URL: Google may index and rank a different version of the page than the one intended, reducing control over what users see in search results.
- Wasted crawl budget: Google may crawl multiple versions of what is essentially the same content — this is inefficient and can delay the indexing of other important pages.
- Diluted SEO signals: Backlinks, structured data, and engagement metrics can be split between two URLs, weakening the overall authority and performance of the page in search.
- Inaccurate performance data in GSC: If Google chooses a different canonical URL than the one specified, the Search Console data that is monitored may not reflect the actual URL shown in search results.
- Risk of content being seen as duplicate: When Google disregards your canonical preference, the search engine may treat the content as duplicate thereby reducing its likelihood of ranking and potentially harming site credibility.
This concludes this article — the following section contains other articles on this website which may be of interest to you.
See Also
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- This article includes step-by-step instructions regarding what to do when the OG image is not showing in the WhatsApp messenger.
- Learn how to fix the incorrect pages found in sitemap.xml SEMrush site audit error now.
- Explore related articles in the custom web application development category.
