The Search Console 'Page' report that tells you which URLs are competing with each other
Here's an awkward thing that happens more often than you'd think: you've written several perfectly decent pages about similar topics, published them all with good intentions, and now Google's looking at your site thinking "right, which one of these am I supposed to show people?" The result is that your pages end up competing with each other rather than neatly dividing up the search landscape like you'd imagined.
This is called keyword cannibalisation, which sounds rather more dramatic than it is, but the name does capture the essence of the problem. When multiple pages target the same search term—whether deliberately or by accident—Google has to pick a winner for each search. Sometimes it picks the page you'd prefer. Sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes it can't make up its mind and keeps swapping between them, which doesn't do much for your rankings at all.
The good news is that Google Search Console has a report that makes this problem visible, and once you can see it, you can actually do something about it.
How the Page report reveals the problem
The Page report in Search Console is tucked away under "Search results" in the left-hand menu. On the surface, it's straightforward enough: it shows you which pages on your site are getting impressions and clicks from Google Search. But the clever bit is when you flip this around and look at it from the other direction.
Here's what you do: instead of looking at pages and seeing which queries they rank for, you look at queries and see which pages are ranking for them. When you spot the same search term appearing for multiple different URLs, that's your cannibalisation in action.
To find this, go to the Search results report, click on "Queries" at the top, pick a query that interests you (probably one with decent impressions), and then click on it. You'll see a list of pages that have appeared in search results for that term. If there's more than one, and they're genuinely different pages rather than things like HTTP vs HTTPS variants, you've got multiple pages competing for the same search term.
Why this matters more than you might think
You might reasonably think "well, if I've got three pages that could rank for a term, surely that's three chances to appear in the results?" In theory, yes. In practice, not so much.
Google's generally only going to show one page from your site for any given search term. There are exceptions—you might get a second result further down, or a featured snippet plus a regular result—but mostly, it's one page per customer. So having multiple pages targeting the same term doesn't give you more visibility; it just makes Google's job harder and your ranking less stable.
What tends to happen is that Google shows different pages at different times, which means none of them build up consistent ranking signals. You end up with three mediocre performers instead of one strong one. Or Google picks the "wrong" page—perhaps an old blog post when you'd really rather it showed your main service page—and you're stuck with traffic going to a less useful part of your site.
There's also the internal linking question. If you're not sure which page should rank for a term, your internal links probably aren't sure either. You might be linking to different pages with similar anchor text, which dilutes the signal about which one matters most.
What to do when you find competing pages
The solution depends on why you've got multiple pages in the first place. Sometimes it's a deliberate content structure that hasn't worked out as planned. Sometimes it's accidental—you didn't realise two pages were targeting the same thing. Either way, you've got options.
The most straightforward fix is to consolidate. If you've got three pages about essentially the same thing, merge them into one comprehensive page and redirect the others to it. This concentrates all your ranking signals in one place and gives Google an unambiguous target. It also means you've got one good page to maintain instead of three mediocre ones, which is less work in the long run.
If the pages genuinely deserve to exist separately—perhaps they're targeting different angles or user intents—then you need to make them more distinct. Revise the content to focus each page on a more specific aspect of the topic. Adjust the titles, headings, and body copy to make it clear what each page is actually about. The goal is to stop them overlapping in Google's eyes.
Sometimes you'll find that one page is clearly the one you want to rank, but a less important page keeps showing up as well. In this case, you might consider de-optimising the page you don't want to rank for that term. Make it more specific to a different topic, or if it's not pulling its weight at all, remove it entirely or fold it into something else.
And if you're going to consolidate or redirect, do it properly. Use 301 redirects, not 302s. Update internal links to point to the new canonical version. Make sure you're not just shuffling the problem around.
The pages you didn't know were competing
The really useful thing about the Page report is that it shows you cannibalisation you didn't know existed. You might have carefully planned your main pages to avoid overlap, but then there's that blog post from 2019 that's ranking for the same term as your main service page. Or a category page that's competing with individual product pages. Or two different service pages that you thought were distinct but Google sees as basically the same.
These accidental overlaps are often the most damaging because you're not monitoring them. You might be wondering why your main page isn't ranking as well as you'd expect, not realising that some forgotten corner of your site is splitting the votes.
This is why it's worth running through your top queries in Search Console every so often and checking which pages are appearing for each. You don't need to do this for every single search term—that would take forever—but your top 20 or 30 queries will probably account for most of your traffic, and that's where cannibalisation hurts most.
When competing pages are actually fine
Just to be contrary, there are times when multiple pages for the same query isn't a problem. If you've got a proper parent-and-child page structure—say, a main category page and several detailed sub-pages—it's perfectly normal for them all to show some impressions for related terms. Google will generally work out which one to show based on what it thinks the searcher wants.
Similarly, if you've got pages targeting different intents for what looks like the same keyword, that's fine. Someone searching for "project management" might want an article about what it is, or they might want software to do it. If you've got both, it makes sense that both would show impressions for that term.
The problem is when pages are genuinely competing—same intent, same topic, just sort of redundant duplicates of each other. That's when you need to tidy up.
Making this a regular check
The annoying thing about cannibalisation is that it's not a one-time problem you can solve and forget about. As you add new content, you risk creating new overlaps. As Google updates and search behaviour changes, pages that weren't competing before might start to.
So it's worth making this part of your regular site maintenance. Once a quarter, perhaps, run through your top queries and check that each one has a clear primary page. If you spot problems early, they're easier to fix—before the wrong page has been ranking for months and you've got to unpick all that history.
The Page report won't solve the problem for you, but it will show you where the problem exists. And that's half the battle, really. Once you can see which pages are stepping on each other's toes, you can make an informed decision about what to do with them. Merge them, differentiate them, or bin the ones that aren't earning their keep. Your site ends up tidier, Google has an easier time working out what to rank, and you stop wondering why your carefully crafted pages aren't performing as well as they should.
More where this came from
If you've found this useful, you'll be pleased to know we've written quite a bit about Search Console and making sense of what Google's up to. We tend to write about the practical bits that actually help you improve your site rather than the vanity metrics that look impressive in reports but don't mean much. Have a look at these to get started:
The "Left on Read" Problem: Why Google Knows Your Page Exists But Won't Reply
Why your 'Average position' in Search Console doesn't mean what you think it means
Why we know about Search Console
We write about search and analytics because it's part of what we do for a living. When we build your website, this sort of thing is baked in from the start—proper structure, sensible targeting, pages that don't accidentally compete with each other. It's rather easier to get it right the first time than to unpick a mess later.
And because we know that launching a site is just the beginning, we also offer an ongoing management service where we take care of all this for you. The monitoring, the optimising, the regular checks for things like cannibalisation—basically all the stuff that you probably don't have time to learn about and definitely don't have time to do. We handle it so you can focus on whatever it is your business actually does.
Would you like to work with us?
If you'd like us to build you a website that's set up properly from day one, or if you've already got a site but suspect it could be performing rather better than it is, we'd be happy to have a conversation about it. No pressure, just a chat about what you need and whether we're the right people to help. Get in touch today and we'll take it from there.
How can I tell if my pages are cannibalizing each other in Google Search Console?
Open the Page report, switch to the Queries tab, pick a query with decent impressions, and see if more than one URL shows up for that term; multiple distinct URLs mean they’re competing.
Does having multiple pages targeting the same keyword improve my chances of ranking?
No, Google usually shows only one page from your site per query, so the pages end up fighting each other and dilute ranking signals.
How often should I check for keyword cannibalisation?
Run a quick check each quarter on your top 20-30 queries in the Page report; that catches new overlaps before they hurt performance.