What is cannibalisation?
Cannibalisation is when two or more pages on the same site target the same query or intent closely enough that they compete with each other instead of one page winning clearly.
Instead of one strong page consolidating all the relevant signals, they split across two or three similar pages, and none of them performs as well as a single combined page would have.
It's arguably worse for AI citation than for search ranking. A search engine can still show two pages from the same site in different result positions without much cost. An AI system typically wants one clear source per claim, and if it can't tell which of two similar pages on a site is the authoritative one, it's just as likely to cite a competitor's single unambiguous page as either of yours.
Cannibalisation isn't caused only by near-duplicate wording. Two pages can be worded completely differently and still cannibalise each other, if they answer the same underlying question for the same reader, the overlap is real regardless of how different the phrasing looks.
Related
- Topic clusterA topic cluster is a group of pages built around one subject, anchored by a broad hub page and linked to a set of narrower supporting pages that all link back to it and to each other.
- Canonical tagA canonical tag tells a search engine which URL is the preferred version of a page when several URLs show similar content.
- Content briefA content brief is a document written before a piece of content that specifies what it must cover, who it's for, and what question it needs to answer, so the writer isn't guessing at scope.
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