"Duplicate without user-selected canonical" struggles - what's going on here?

Question

Context: I have a bunch of different landing pages with different content for https://watchdog.chat - one for Telegram, one for Discord, etc. The H1 is different, the H2 is different, the page title is different, the screenshots on how to set it up are all different, etc.

Yet, Google refuses to index these pages because of this error. What could be causing the issue?

I figured changing the headers and content to that degree would fix it after some research to try to figure out what that error means, but maybe I need to do something else? If you're experienced with SEO, does anything jump out to you?

Example:
Main landing page (indexed): https://watchdog.chat
Discord landing page (not indexed due to the above error): https://watchdog.chat/ai-chat-moderator-for-discord/

Thanks!

brian lowery · Accepted Answer

you should almost always specify a canonical for every page, otherwise you're just making google guess. It's what I do and I never have canonical problems.

Alex Styl · Answer

there doesn't seem to be a canonical set to either of those pages, or something is off and it doesn't get picked up. might be related

Alex Styl · Answer

afaik google doesn't like pages with too much similar content, which could be the case, as most of it seems to be shared.

I always add the canonical of every page to be the page itself. seemed to be working fine

Ben Katz · Answer

Makes sense, thanks. I already deployed a change to do the same - will see if it helps

Ben Katz · Answer

I guess where I'm confused is: I thought the page itself would be auto marked as canonical if Google detects it as a different page...which it should since the content is not the same as the main landing page?

Not sure how to set this canonical prop otherwise, would you recommend setting the canonical as the current page or the main landing page in this case? 

If main landing page, does that mean all the content on my discord landing page will be ignored? That's something I don't want to happen

Ben Katz · Answer

I already link to those different landing pages from my main page so not sure that’s it either 🤔

Will see what happens next time my site audit runs

Javier Montes · Answer

I don't know if that alone will do it, besides of content probably improving internal linking also will help (linking from different parts of your website with different anchors to each page).

Ben Katz · Answer

Ok got it, thank you. I'll give that a shot and see if it helps

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"Duplicate without user-selected canonical" struggles - what's going on here?

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