Key takeaways
- A practical guide to the GSC status 'Alternate page with proper canonical tag': when it's normal, when it signals accidental duplicates, and how to decide whether to consolidate or ignore
Table of Contents
This is one of the most misread GSC statuses.
"Alternate page with proper canonical tag" is often good news.
It means:
- you have a canonical URL
- this URL is a known alternate
- Google understands the relationship
Start with the status map:
When this status is normal (do nothing)
Common normal cases:
- URLs with
?utm_*parameters - printer-friendly views
- minor variants you intentionally canonicalize
- pagination where canonicals point to the main page (depends on strategy)
In these cases, the "fix" is not to index the alternate.
When it's a problem (accidental duplication)
It's a problem when alternates exist because of bugs or inconsistent routing:
wwwvs apex- trailing slash vs no slash
- query variants like
?m=1 - old feed endpoints (
/feed,/rss.xml, etc.)
If you see lots of alternates, you'll also see:
- Duplicate without user-selected canonical
- "crawled/discovered not indexed" growing due to crawl debt
The fix checklist
1) Confirm the canonical target is correct
The canonical URL should:
- return 200 OK
- not redirect
- be the URL you want to rank
2) Consolidate accidental alternates with redirects
If the alternate is accidental, 301 it to the canonical.
Goal: one content page в†’ one indexable URL.
3) Reduce parameter noise
If parameters create duplicates, pick a strategy:
- strip params via redirects (best for junk params)
- keep params but canonicalize them to the clean URL
4) Validate in GSC
In URL Inspection:
- user-declared canonical = your preferred URL
- google-selected canonical = the same URL
The alternate URL may remain "not indexed" — that's expected.
If you're fighting indexing at the same time
Ambiguous canonicals often cause "priority" problems because Google wastes crawl on duplicates.
These two posts explain the broader dynamic:
- Crawled - currently not indexed: what actually fixes it
- Discovered - currently not indexed: why it happens
FAQ
Should I force the alternate URL to be indexed?
Usually no. You want one URL per intent. If you need both, they must be meaningfully different.
Is this status bad for SEO?
Not by itself. It's only bad if you have too many alternates and you don't control the pattern.
Next in SEO & Search
Up next:
Soft 404 in Google Search Console: What it means and how to fix itA practical guide to "Soft 404" in Google Search Console: why Google labels 200 pages as not-found, the most common causes (empty templates, missing data, thin pages), and how to validate fixes.