Understanding and Fixing the 'Duplicate without user-selected canonical' Error in Google Search Console

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 I recently encountered the "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" error in the Google Search Console for my company's website. This error means that Google did not index a certain page on the website because it was considered a duplicate of another page, and no canonical page was designated using the canonical tag.

According to Google's official documentation, if you believe that the wrong URL has been chosen as the canonical page, you can explicitly mark the canonical page for the duplicate page. Alternatively, you can ensure that the content between the duplicate pages differs substantively, which may help Google understand that the pages are not truly duplicates. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203?hl=en

In my situation, I have a few PDF pages on my website that are not being indexed by Google because they are considered duplicates.

  • https://scgroup.global/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/css/main-sitemap.xsl - Sep 16, 2022
  •  https://scgroup.global/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ISO-9001-2015.pdf - Jun 27, 2021
  • https://scgroup.global/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ISO-14001-2015.pdf - Dec 16, 2020

However, these pages do not have a <head> section, so it is not possible to use the canonical tag to indicate the preferred page. As a result, I will need to use HTTP headers to set the canonicals for these pages. It's worth noting that these PDF pages may not need to be indexed by Google if they do not contain important or relevant information.

PDF URL is not on Google:

P.S: In such cases, we’ll need to use HTTP headers to set canonicals. You can also use a canonical in HTTP headers on standard webpages.

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