Alternate Page With Proper Canonical Tag

What’s actually happening

A batch of URLs sits under "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" in the Pages report, marked excluded but not as errors. URL Inspection shows "Google-selected canonical" and "User-declared canonical" both pointing at the same other URL. This is usually Google doing exactly what you asked — it found a variant, followed your `rel=canonical`, and indexed the original instead. Worth a glance only to confirm nothing valuable got swept in.

Common causes

• URL variants with parameters (`?utm_*`, `?sort=`, `?color=`) that all canonicalize to the clean URL — expected and fine.
• Paginated, filtered, or faceted pages canonicalizing to a primary or view-all page.
• Print, AMP, or m-dot versions correctly pointing back at the standard desktop URL.
• HTTP vs HTTPS or www vs non-www duplicates resolving to the chosen version.
• A real page mistakenly given a canonical to a different URL — the one case that actually needs fixing.

How to fix it

1. Verify it's only variants in the listOpen the example URLs in the Pages report. If they're parameterized, paginated, or protocol/host duplicates, this is informational — no action needed. Skim for any URL you actually want indexed.
2. Spot-check the canonical targetFor a sample URL, run URL Inspection and confirm the user-declared canonical points where you intend. If a valuable, unique page is canonicalizing to something else, that's a misconfiguration, not expected dedup.
3. Fix any wrongly-canonicalized pageEdit that page's `rel=canonical` to be self-referential (or point to the correct primary). Make sure internal links and the sitemap reference the same URL so the signals line up.
4. Leave correct dedup aloneDon't try to force every variant into the index — that creates the duplicate-content problem canonicals exist to prevent. Excluded-but-canonicalized is the healthy state for variants.