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This means that the URL in question specifies a canonical element that contains the invalid HTML attributes hreflang, lang, media, or type.
Canonical annotations are meant to help search engines determine what page is canonical when a set of duplicates exists. When properly implemented, search engines will only index the canonical URL.
Google's documentation specifies that rel="canonical" annotation is ignored when it contains the attributes hreflang, lang, media, or type. That is because these attributes indicate the existence of alternate versions of a page, which conflicts with the meaning of the canonical tag.
The hint will trigger for any URL that specifies a canonical link element containing HTML attributes that will cause the canonical annotation to be ignored, specifically hreflang, lang, media, or type.
Consider the URL: https://example.com/page-a
The Hint would trigger for this URL if the rel="canonical" tag contained the type attribute:
<head>
<title>Canonical with type</title>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page-b" type="text/html"/>
...
</head>Another example is if the rel="canonical" tag contained hreflang attributes:
<head>
<title>Canonical with hreflang</title>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page-b" hreflang="en"/>
...
</head>The Hint would also trigger for this URL if the canonical link element contained lang or media attributes in the same way.
Consider whether your page is part of a set of duplicates or an alternate version of a page, optimized for a specific location, language, or device.
If your page is a duplicate, remove the invalid HTML attributes from your rel="canonical" element.
If your page is an alternate, remove the rel="canonical" element and use the appropriate HTML annotation.
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