Free Repair Guide 11 / 11 · Wrong Canonical URL

Your page tells search engines that another domain is the real address

When a page includes <link rel="canonical" href="..."> pointing at a different domain, a parent site, or a temporary staging address, Google treats your page as a duplicate copy of that other URL and drops your address from search results. You can fix it in three minutes for free.

1. Find the wrong rel="canonical" tag in your page head

Every browser lets you inspect the raw HTML your server sent before scripts run:

  1. Open your home page and press Ctrl+U (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Option+U (Mac) to view source.
  2. Search for canonical. A wrong canonical tag points to a different hostname or root page instead of the page you are on:<!-- Wrong: points a subdomain or live domain at another address --> <link rel="canonical" href="https://other-domain.com/">

2. Update the canonical tag to match your live https:// address

  1. In static HTML, Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, or custom templates: Open your page's <head> template and set the href to the exact https:// address of that site:<link rel="canonical" href="https://yourdomain.com/">If the site was copied from a sibling project or starter template, check that the hardcoded domain from the original project was replaced in both <link rel="canonical"> and <meta property="og:url">.
  2. In WordPress (Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or All in One SEO): Edit the home page, scroll to the SEO box, open the Advanced tab, and clear the Canonical URL field (leaving it blank lets WordPress output your live site URL automatically) or set it to your live https:// domain. Also check Settings → General to verify both WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) use your live domain rather than a staging host.
  3. In Shopify, Webflow, Wix, or Squarespace: Open Settings → Domains and make sure your live custom domain is set as the Primary domain so the platform stops emitting its preview subdomain in your canonical tag.

3. Verify the fix and ask Google to recrawl

  1. Run our free check at check.kortaga.com on your domain to confirm the canonical mismatch warning is gone.
  2. In Google Search Console, paste your home page URL into the top URL Inspection bar and click Request Indexing so Google updates the canonical address immediately.

These steps follow Google Search Central's guide on How to specify a canonical with rel="canonical" and other methods, read 29 October 2026.

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