How We Fixed the “Duplicate – Google Chose Different Canonical Than User” Indexing Issue

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Recently, I encountered an interesting indexing issue in Google Search Console while working on the website: https://www.schoolblazerlimited.com/Google Search Console showed the following notification:

“Duplicate – Google chose different canonical than user.”

This issue can sometimes be confusing because even when the technical SEO setup is correct, Google may still choose a different canonical URL.

In this post, I would like to share the root cause, investigation process, and the steps we took to resolve the issue.

The Issue Observed in Google Search Console

When we inspected the homepage URL in Google Search Console, we noticed:

  • The non-www version was indexed in Google - https://schoolblazerlimited.com/

  • The www version was not indexed - https://www.schoolblazerlimited.com/

When checking the URL Inspection Tool, the status showed:“Duplicate – Google chose different canonical than user.”



This meant that although we had specified a canonical URL, Google had selected another version of the page as the canonical.

Strange SERP Snippet Appearing in Google

When we searched using the operator: site:schoolblazerlimited.com

Google displayed the non-www version in search results, but the snippet contained dummy template content:

“Engage customers with free branded templates with GoDaddy Studio. GoDaddy Studio: Free templates. Start for Free.”

This clearly indicated that Google had crawled the website during the early development stage when dummy template content was still present.

Root Cause of the Issue

During the initial website registration and design phase, the website was built using a dummy template.

However, at that time:

  • A noindex tag was not implemented, OR

  • Search engines were not restricted from crawling the site

As a result:

  1. Google crawled the non-www version

  2. The page was indexed with dummy template snippet content

  3. Later, even after implementing the correct SEO setup, Google continued to treat the non-www version as the canonical

Current Technical SEO Setup (Correctly Implemented)

After the issue was discovered, we verified the website’s technical SEO configuration. Everything was correctly implemented:

  • The non-www URL: https://schoolblazerlimited.com/ was 301 permanently redirected to https://www.schoolblazerlimited.com/

  • The canonical tag was correctly set to: https://www.schoolblazerlimited.com/

  • The correct homepage URL was included in the XML sitemap

  • All internal links point to the www version

  • A URL inspection and indexing request was submitted in Google Search Console

However, the indexing request still returned: “Duplicate – Google chose different canonical than user.”

The Solution Implemented

Since the issue was related to outdated snippet content indexed earlier, we took action outside of Google Search Console.

Step 1 — Submitted a Snippet Refresh Request

We submitted a refresh request for the outdated snippet directly through Google by clicking the three-dot vertical menu (⋮) next to the webpage listing in Google Search Results and following these steps: About this result → Send feedback to Google → Select “Inaccurate content.”

This request asks Google to recrawl the page and update the search result snippet.


Step 2 — Google Approved the Refresh Request

The refresh request was:

  • Successfully submitted

  • Reviewed by Google

  • Approved


Step 3 — Google Updated the Search Result

After the refresh request was processed:

  • The new snippet was updated

  • The www version of the page appeared in Google SERP

https://www.schoolblazerlimited.com/


Final Step: Validating the Fix in Google Search Console

Once the SERP update was confirmed:

  1. We submitted “Validate Fix” in Google Search Console for the issue
    “Duplicate – Google chose different canonical than user.”

  2. After about one week, Google confirmed:

“Page indexing issues successfully fixed.”

for the site: https://www.schoolblazerlimited.com/

Key SEO Lessons From This Incident

This issue highlights some important technical SEO best practices:

1️⃣ Always block search engines during development

Use:

  • noindex tag
    or

  • password protection / robots.txt restrictions

2️⃣ Remove dummy template content before allowing indexing

Search engines may index temporary or placeholder content if not blocked.

3️⃣ Canonical tags alone may not override Google’s choice

Google can choose a different canonical if it already indexed another version earlier.

4️⃣ Use Google’s snippet refresh tool when outdated SERP data appears

Sometimes the issue is not the page itself but outdated cached content in search results.

Conclusion

Even when the technical SEO setup is correct, indexing issues may occur due to earlier crawl history or cached content.

In this case, the issue was resolved by:

  • identifying the initial indexing cause

  • refreshing the outdated snippet

  • validating the fix in Google Search Console

This incident is a good reminder that SEO issues sometimes originate from early development stages of a website.

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