SEO Small

Point your canonical, share tags and sitemap at your own domain

A site tells search engines and social networks its own address in several places: the canonical link, the og:url and og:image share tags, the Sitemap line in robots.txt, and the URLs in its sitemap. When those name another host, such as the hosting platform's default address (main.<id>.amplifyapp.com, <project>.vercel.app) or an old domain, search engines are told that host is the real one. This check reads each of them and flags any that leave the site's own domain or its www/apex twin. A share image on an image CDN is fine; one on a platform's default host is not.

Find out whether your site has this problem, and every other check, in one free scan.

Check your site free

Why it matters

A canonical or sitemap naming another host tells search engines to rank that host instead of your domain, so your own pages can drop out of results and shared links show the wrong address.

How to fix

1 Find where the site URL is configured (a SITE_URL or base URL setting, or the hosting platform's environment variables) and set it to your own domain.
2 Rebuild and redeploy, so the canonical, og tags and sitemap are generated with the right host.
3 Check that robots.txt names the sitemap on your own domain.

Common mistakes

Building the site with the platform's preview URL as its base URL and never changing it after adding a custom domain.
Fixing the canonical but leaving the sitemap and og tags generated from the old setting.
Pointing robots.txt at a sitemap on another host.

How to verify

1 View the page source and check the canonical link and the og:url and og:image tags name your own domain.
2 Open /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml and check every URL is on your own domain.
3 In Google Search Console, check the canonical Google chose for your home page.

Ready to see where you stand?

Scan your site and get your Engineering Score with a prioritized roadmap in under a minute, no signup required.

Scan your site