Canonical target is non-200 / non-indexable

What it means

The URL you declared as canonical in the <link rel="canonical"> tag is returning a status code other than 200, or is blocked from indexing.

Why it matters

Google follows the canonical link to the target URL during crawling. If the target is a 4xx or 5xx, it is not indexed and can cause the source page to lose its ranking signal. A non-indexable target also wastes crawl budget because Google keeps fetching it.

How to fix it

1. Fetch the canonical target URL directly and check its HTTP status code.
2. If it returns 4xx or 5xx, fix the underlying page so it returns 200.
3. If the target is a 301 or 308 redirect, verify the final destination is a 200 and is indexable.
4. Ensure the target page does not have a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> or a robots.txt disallow that blocks it.

When it's not a problem

This is a false alarm when the canonical target is a 301 or 308 redirect to an indexed page, because Google follows those redirects and treats them as a strong canonical signal. It is also fine when the target is a 302 or 303 redirect that is intended to be temporary.

How common is it?

1 audited site in our corpus currently show this issue. The breakdowns below show which platforms, gatekeepers, verticals and countries are most exposed.