site.canonical-target-broken
Pages name a canonical URL that answers 4xx/5xx or does not load, so search engines cannot use it.
What to change
Point the canonical at the live URL of the preferred page, usually the page itself. Canonicals built from a route pattern often miss a trailing slash or a locale prefix.
The documentation on developers.google.comA finding of this rule on a page carries the exact edits for that page: the markup it quotes, and what to write instead.
When it runs
Runs on a crawl or a build directory. An error is a problem that keeps a page out of search or out of answers, or breaks how it shows there. Each finding takes 15 points off the page's score.
The severity here is the rule's usual one: a finding can be raised or lowered when the page gives a reason.
Run it, or skip it
Check a page for this rule alone, after a fix for instance:
npx @rivi-software/agentic-seo-check crawl https://example.com --rule site.canonical-target-brokenOr from an assistant, with the MCP tool seo_crawl_site:
{
"url": "https://example.com",
"rules": [
"site.canonical-target-broken"
]
}To leave it out of an audit, pass --disable site.canonical-target-broken on the command, or disableRules: ["site.canonical-target-broken"] to a tool.
More in Site-wide checks
All 49 rules- Warning
site.host-variant-not-redirectedThe www/non-www variant of the host does not redirect to the main host. - Warning
site.hreflang-no-return-linkhreflang alternates do not link back to the page that references them. - Warning
site.broken-external-linksExternal links point to URLs that return 4xx/5xx or fail to load. - Info
site.unlinked-pagesHTML files in the build output that no other page links to. - Warning
site.canonical-target-redirectsPages name a canonical URL that redirects; the canonical should be the final URL. - Warning
site.canonical-target-noindexPages name as canonical a page that is set to noindex, so the page meant to be indexed is kept out of the index. - Warning
site.canonical-chainA page's canonical points to a page whose own canonical points somewhere else (A to B to C). - Info
site.links-to-noindexPages set to noindex are linked from other pages of the site. A noindex page that much of the site links to is often noindex by mistake. Cart, search, login and account pages are left out.