Can multiple canonical tags on a page cause SEO issues?

[marcustaylor]

Hey everyone,

I just noticed that some of my pages have multiple canonical tags—one set manually and another added by the CMS. I’m worried this might confuse search engines. Does Google ignore them, pick one, or could this cause indexing and duplicate content issues? Has anyone dealt with this before? What’s the best way to fix it without hurting SEO?

[not2easy]

Are the canonical links identical in the tags or are they different? Different canonical links would not be good.

If the CMS in question is WP, you can easily turn off the canonical tags in the plugin settings.

[marcustaylor]

The canonical tags are actually different, which is what concerns me. I’m guessing this could send mixed signals to Google. Do you think it would be best to remove the CMS-generated one and keep the manual tag, or is there a better approach?

[lucy24]

You know better than a dumb machine. (Or dumb CMS, as the case may be.) Use the manual ones, since you've already got them.

[marcustaylor]

Thanks all for your prompt response.

[Andy2211]

I’ve run into that before—it can definitely be a problem. When there are multiple canonical tags on a page, Google might get mixed signals. Sometimes it picks one, sometimes it just ignores both, which isn't great if you're trying to avoid duplicate content issues. I agree with previous response, use the manual ones.