Find the queries where your own pages compete

What is keyword cannibalisation?

It's when two or more pages on the same site show up for the same search query. Google picks between them, sometimes swapping from one week to the next, and neither page gets the full benefit.

It isn't always a problem. A product page and a guide can both rank for a broad query because they answer different needs. The cases worth fixing are the ones where both pages answer the same thing.

How does Copilot SEO detect it?

From the query-level Search Console data for the last few weeks Google has finished reporting. Any query that sent impressions to two or more of your URLs is a candidate, and the ones with the most impressions come first.

One limit worth knowing: Search Console leaves anonymised queries out of query-level data, so rare queries never appear here.

What you see in the app

The Reports page has a Cannibalisation tab. Each query shows how many URLs it reached, its total impressions, and the competing URLs with their own impressions, clicks and position.

It also gives a rough estimate of what consolidating might be worth. Treat that figure as a way to sort the list, not a forecast.

The Action plan adds a "Check competing intent" item for each query, naming the URLs involved.

What should you do about it?

The Action plan's advice: confirm whether the pages answer distinct intents, and only consolidate or clarify targeting when users and the search results genuinely overlap.

1. Search the query yourself. What kind of page does Google rank for it: a guide, a product, a comparison?
2. If one of your pages is clearly the better match, make it the obvious one. Link to it from the other page, and take the query out of the other page's title.
3. If the pages say the same thing, merge them and redirect the weaker URL to the stronger one.
4. If they answer different needs, leave them alone.

Then measure it. An SEO experiment on a group of URLs compares the pages before and after the change. If the page you kept ranks but still gets few clicks, look at it as a CTR opportunity. If a page's clicks are falling and another of your URLs is picking up its queries, that shows up under content decay too.