Canonical conflict resolution

Canonical is a hint, not an instruction, and search engines override it when other signals disagree. This skill finds where your declared canonical conflicts with your internal links, sitemap, hreflang or redirects, and makes them agree.

The skill file

---
name: canonical-conflict-resolution
description: Use when pages are being consolidated into the wrong URL, or when Google reports a canonical different from the one you declared.
---

# Canonical conflict resolution

Canonical is a hint, not an instruction, and search engines override it when other signals disagree. This skill finds where your declared canonical conflicts with your internal links, sitemap, hreflang or redirects, and makes them agree.

## What you need first

- A crawl exporting declared canonical per URL
- Search Console page indexing data showing Google-selected canonical
- Sitemap URLs

## Method

1. List every URL where the declared canonical differs from the Google-selected canonical.
2. For each, check the four signals that override a canonical: internal links pointing elsewhere, sitemap listing a different URL, redirects to a third URL, and hreflang naming a different self-reference.
3. Make every signal agree with the canonical you actually want. The canonical tag alone is rarely enough.
4. Confirm each canonical points at a URL that returns 200 - a canonical to a redirect or a 404 is ignored.
5. Check for self-referencing canonicals on paginated and filtered URLs, where a canonical to page one silently removes deeper pages from the index.
6. Recrawl and confirm the declared and selected canonicals now match.

## What this produces

A conflict table showing, per URL, which signal disagreed and what was changed to resolve it.

## Where this goes wrong

- Canonicalising paginated pages to page one and losing the deeper products
- Pointing a canonical at a redirecting URL
- Treating canonical as a directive that overrides internal linking

---

From the QuQi skill library - https://www.quqi.io/skills/canonical-conflict-resolution

What you need first

• A crawl exporting declared canonical per URL
• Search Console page indexing data showing Google-selected canonical
• Sitemap URLs

Method

1. 01 List every URL where the declared canonical differs from the Google-selected canonical.
2. 02 For each, check the four signals that override a canonical: internal links pointing elsewhere, sitemap listing a different URL, redirects to a third URL, and hreflang naming a different self-reference.
3. 03 Make every signal agree with the canonical you actually want. The canonical tag alone is rarely enough.
4. 04 Confirm each canonical points at a URL that returns 200 - a canonical to a redirect or a 404 is ignored.
5. 05 Check for self-referencing canonicals on paginated and filtered URLs, where a canonical to page one silently removes deeper pages from the index.
6. 06 Recrawl and confirm the declared and selected canonicals now match.

What this produces

A conflict table showing, per URL, which signal disagreed and what was changed to resolve it.

Where this goes wrong

• Canonicalising paginated pages to page one and losing the deeper products
• Pointing a canonical at a redirecting URL
• Treating canonical as a directive that overrides internal linking

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