How to fix it
List the canonical URL in the sitemap instead of this one.
When it is not a problem
Paginated and filtered pages that canonicalize to the first page are a common and harmless case. The entry is redundant rather than harmful; tidy it when the sitemap is next touched.
How Rankelle handles it
- SeverityInformational. Often correct as it stands, and reported so you can see the pattern rather than so you can clear it.
- DetectionDetected on a single page while crawling it, then grouped with the other pages under the same URL pattern.
- GroupingEvery page with this finding under the same URL pattern becomes one cause, with a confidence taken from how much of the pattern is affected. 400 of 400 is a template; 6 of 14 is phrased as a question. Causes are ranked by the impressions behind their pages.
- LandingThe affected URLs stay under cheap watch. When this finding is gone from all of them, the fix is marked landed without anyone reporting the deploy.
- VerdictAt landing, comparable untouched URLs are frozen as a control set. Twenty-eight days later the two are compared, and the fix can come back as having done nothing — all four verdicts reach the report.
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