When City Landing Pages Compete: A Search Console Diagnostic

Multi-city service sites drift into the same shape over time. One page ranks, so a second city gets the same page with the city name swapped, and a year later there are fifteen near-identical URLs quietly competing for the same handful of queries.

Search Console can show you where that is happening. It cannot, on its own, prove that it is hurting you. This is how to run the diagnostic and keep the conclusion proportionate to the evidence.

The query-to-page test

1. Open the Performance report and set a date range you will reuse.
2. Add a query filter for one exact query.
3. Switch to the Pages tab with that filter still applied.
4. Record every URL that appears, with its impressions, clicks and average position.
5. Repeat for the same query over the previous, equal-length period so you can see whether the pattern persists.

One URL is clean. Several URLs, repeatedly, across matched periods, is where the investigation starts.

What our own data showed

Between August 12 and September 8, 2026, Google Search Console recorded 219 impressions and zero clicks for the query "seo company near me" across seven of our own URLs. The distribution looked like this.

These are ThinkProfits visibility measurements, not market search volume. Sitewide over the same window we recorded 95 clicks and 150,515 impressions at a 0.0631% CTR and an average position of 29.74.

Why this is a clue, not proof

Three things stop the table above from being a verdict.

• Sampling. Search Console query rows are incomplete. In this window they omitted 63.16% of our sitewide clicks and 8.13% of sitewide impressions relative to the untotalled figures.
• Geography. "Near me" resolves differently for every searcher. Different city pages appearing for the same query string can simply mean different searchers in different places, which is the system working correctly.
• Position depth. Averages near position 19 and 48 are well outside the range where a single winner would be expected anyway. Low positions can look like cannibalization when the real issue is overall authority for the term.

Verify before you act

1. Split by country and device to see whether the URLs separate cleanly by geography.
2. Check canonicals. Confirm each city page self-canonicals and that none points at a sibling by accident.
3. Compare the content, not the template. Strip the city name and see how much unique substance remains.
4. Check intent match. A general service page and a city page answering the same question is a real conflict; a service page and a case study is not.
5. Check internal links. Which page do your own nav, footer and body links treat as the answer for that query.

The doorway-page boundary

Google's guidance on doorway pages targets sets of pages created mainly to capture query variations and funnel visitors to the same destination without adding value of their own. The test is substance, not count. A city page that names the neighbourhoods served, the local work done, the people who do it, real pricing context and location-specific proof is a page. A page that is the same 700 words with one word swapped is the thing the guidance describes.

Four decisions, one per page

Whichever you choose, write the decision date and an evaluation date next to it. Consolidations in particular take weeks to settle, and the temptation to reverse them early is what turns one change into three.

Sources

• Google Search Console Performance report, ThinkProfits property, August 12 to September 8, 2026.
• Google Search Central documentation on doorway pages and on Search Console data discrepancies.

Our local SEO services page covers how we structure multi-city sites, SEO services explains the broader programme, and the free SEO audit tool gives you a first look at the pages in question. If you would rather talk it through, contact us.