stillindexedStart monitoringOpen the app

Search Console Page indexing: Why pages aren't indexed

Alternate page with proper canonical tag: is it OK?

Google says there is nothing to do for this status. The one case where it does need a look, and how to check the canonical target is indexed.

Usually this is fine. Google found a page that names another URL as its canonical, agreed, and indexed the canonical instead. Google says there is nothing you need to do. Check only that the canonical target is the page you want in Search, and that it is indexed.

What "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" means

Google: "This page correctly points to the canonical page, which is indexed, so there is nothing you need to do." Its examples are an AMP page with a desktop canonical, a mobile version of a desktop canonical, or the desktop version of a mobile canonical. Google adds that alternate language pages are not detected by Search Console.

Is it a problem?

Usually fine

No, in most cases. Google's guide to the report says having a page marked duplicate or alternate "is usually a good thing; it means that we've found the canonical page and indexed it." It needs a look only when a page you want ranking on its own shows up here, which means its canonical points somewhere else.

Causes, most likely first

  1. URL variants that declare the main page as canonical: tracking parameters, sort orders, print versions.
  2. An AMP or separate mobile page pointing at its canonical counterpart, the cases Google names.
  3. A page meant to stand alone whose canonical tag points elsewhere because of a template or plugin default. This is the one case that needs fixing.

How to confirm it

  1. Run the canonical checker on the URL to see the canonical it declares, and whether that target redirects or fails.
  2. Inspect the URL and compare "User-declared canonical" with "Google-selected canonical". Google notes the canonical choice is made at indexing time, so the live test cannot show it.
  3. Inspect the canonical target and confirm it is indexed.

Canonical checker

How to fix it

  1. If the page is a variant of the canonical, do nothing.
  2. If the page should rank on its own, point its canonical tag at itself, make its content clearly distinct, and request indexing.
  3. If the canonical target is not the page you want in Search, correct the canonical on every variant.

How long recovery takes

Nothing to recover in the normal case. If you change a canonical, Google says it "might hold pages in a duplicate cluster for up to two weeks" even after the underlying issue is fixed.

Would monitoring have caught it?

This status is usually healthy, so there is nothing here to catch. What monitoring catches is the change that would turn it bad: the canonical tag on a monitored URL changing or disappearing is a warning, confirmed on the next scheduled check.

stillindexed checks each monitored URL every 30 minutes on Starter and every 15 minutes on Agency, so the change is found on the next check and confirmed before it alerts, rather than waiting for this report to update.

See what monitoring covers

A canonical tag pointing at the wrong URL, platform by platform

Further reading

Sources

Every claim above about how Google behaves is from Google's own documentation, read on 2026-10-06. If Google has changed a page since, Google's page wins and we would like to know.