You must guarantee that search engines easily decipher any information you put on your site in order for it to be noticed by them. The warning about the presence of the problem of duplication without the selection of a canonical by users is one of the warning signs of SEO problems on Google Search. Then, what then is it and how is it solved? If so, this blog will take you through all of this, explaining the issue and how to use it accordingly.

What Is a Canonical Tag?

Canonical tags are HTML elements that are placed within the part of a site. Such tags inform the search engines on what page will be regarded as the "main" page when other pages contain similar or even duplicate content.The canonical tags just indicate to the search engines the indexation of what should be considered the actual product if you have the same product in multiple product categories.

What Does Duplicate Without User-Selected Canonical Mean?

This condition "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" in Google search console indicates that Google crawled and found duplicate pages or pages with similar contents but failed in specifying just which page has to be taken as a primary one using canonical. It happens when Google will choose a canonical version of its own- not necessarily the page that you'd want to rank. Unlike an alternate page with proper canonical tag, these pages have not given you, the site owner, even a hint of what they could be.

Why Is It Considered a Problem?

You may consider that it is okay to entrust Google to make decisions, but it is dangerous:

Lack of control:One can imagine that Google has decided the wrong page to be treated as the canonical.
Diluted link equity:Without telling Google which one is the canonical page through the proper tag, it's likely that backlinks would be split across these duplicates.
Wasted crawl budget:Googlebot spends time crawling pages that should not have been indexed.
Confused user experience:The wrong version may show up in search results.

Unlikely an alternate page with proper canonical tag that directs Google correctly otherwise, pages tagged as "duplicate without user-selected canonical" leave the decision to the algorithm.

How to Fix “Duplicate Without User-Selected Canonical” Issue:

In order to address this problem, the following steps must be used:

Look for Links on Google Search Console To locate the identical link of particular IDs mentioned in Screaming Frog via the account, utilize tools like Google.
Pick the Preferred Version Choose which page is the master (true) version.
Insert Canonical Tags In the section of all duplicate pages, insert a canonical tag which refers to the URL that is preferred.
Use 301 Redirects (If Needed) If it serves no useful purpose, it warrants consideration of the 301 redirect to the canonical version rather than providing a canonical tag.
Less-permissive Persona Avoid referential self-canonicalization as it creates confusion. Such a canonical should even require that it be located in a self-canonical subpage reference.

What Could You do to prevent this in the future?

Prevention is better than fixing. Here are some SEO tips to avoid the “duplicate without user-selected canonical” error:

One should always put a canonical tag at the top of the page even when it refers to itself.
No difference in URLs (e.g. trailing slash, HTTP vs HTTPS,www vs non-www).
Do not allow session ID and tracking parameters to generate duplicated URLs.
Move the distinctive material to a canonical tag to the main category page.
Audit your site regularly in order to discover and repair duplicate content.

When each alternate page with proper canonical tag, it significantly reduces the risk of misinterpretation by search engines.

Why Should You Care?

Ignoring the “duplicate without user-selected canonical” warning can impact your site’s rankings and user trust. Using a canonical tag properly ensures Google understands your site structure and content relationships, which is vital for SEO success.

Conclusion:

This "duplicate without user-selected canonical" really messes up the search engine optimization for your website in that it might confuse search engines and endanger your chances of ranking well on them. As a solution to this problem, you need to do the following: use a canonical tag that indicates exactly the main version of each page. This simplifies your content structure for search engines and eliminates problems of duplicate content, improving your total site performance. Keep track of duplicate pages on your site consistently. Make sure that all alternate pages within the site have the right canonical tag.