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DEV-CAN-08Should8 of 11 in CAN

Make pages that share a URL pattern differ in their main content

Level
Should

Recommended: skip it only for a reason you can name.

Documentation

Documented

At least one cited Google document states or supports it.

Area
CANCanonicals, redirects and duplicates
Covered

Automatic

Decided automatically once Regensbot crawls your verified site.

Why it matters

Google clusters near matches and structurally similar pages, and fixing a wrong cluster comes down to making the pages sufficiently different; they can stay clustered for up to two weeks after a fix. Said at Search Central Live: when several URLs under one pattern, or city pages with similar stock, show the same content, Google may assume that every URL fitting the pattern shows that content without looking at the page.

How to meet it

Give location, variant and category pages distinct main content (local stock, staff, prices, addresses, a unique introduction), not just a different title. Return 404 for empty or invalid combinations and for URLs that no longer exist, and avoid generating many similar-looking URLs that lead to the same content.

How to test it

The Page indexing report's "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user" reason, grouped by URL pattern, stays flat; URL Inspection shows sampled pattern URLs as their own canonical.

How Regensbot covers it

AutomaticNeedsA crawl of your site

Decided automatically once Regensbot crawls your verified site.

The crawl is polite: sitemap first, one request per second per host. A problem it finds is definite, and “none found” passes only on a complete crawl.

How verdicts workWhat you connect

Sources

Google documents02

  1. 01Fix canonicalization issuesGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
  2. 02What is canonicalizationGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)

Claims in the knowledge base06

  1. D2-C373SourceHandling web duplicationGoogle's documentation
  2. D2-C371ConsistentHandling web duplicationShown on screen
  3. D2-C368UndocumentedHandling web duplicationShown on screen
  4. D2-C370UndocumentedHandling web duplicationShown on screen
  5. D2-C369UndocumentedHandling web duplicationShown on screen
  6. D2-C372n/aHandling web duplicationThe author's interpretation

Claim IDs refer to the Search Central Live 2026 knowledge base. The knowledge base (opens in a new tab)

Consistent
Google's documentation supports it without stating it.
Undocumented
Said or shown at the event, not in the documentation.
Source
The claim is the cited document itself.
n/a
Nothing to verify: a quotation, framing, opinion or analysis.

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