Importance: Low
Error «Canonical URL Contains Another Host» Description
Indicates pages with another host in URL in the <link rel="canonical" /> tag or HTTP response header 'Link: rel="alternate"'.
The Importance of the Problem
When a page is available via several addresses or a site has multiple pages with similar content, search engines recommend to specify which URL is the main and has to be shown in search using the <link rel="canonical" /> tag or the 'Link: rel="canonical"' HTTP header. Thereby search robots will not waste their resources on crawling duplicate or unimportant pages.
URL with a host, different from the host of the current page, might be mistakenly set in canonical instruction. It most frequently happens on www subdomain when a canonical URL points to the main domain. Also, some search engines may ignore such inter-host instructions. As a result, unimportant pages might get higher rankings in search. It may lead to low rankings of important pages, traffic loss, and even removal of these pages from search results.
How to Fix Error
Make sure that canonical URLs containing another host are implemented correctly.
|