Lab notes
Our Launch SEO Audit Found the Wrong Canonical Domain
A dated first-party audit of Starry Research Labs. Three working language pages pointed to a preview domain, with no public sitemap.
By Starry Research Labs · Published and reviewed
What did we check?
On October 17, 2026, Hong Kong time, we fetched the initial HTML of our Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English homepages. We checked their HTTP status, canonical URLs and language annotations. We also requested /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml.
This was a public technical check. It did not measure Google rankings, search clicks or AI citations. The three language pages returned HTTP 200.
What did the source HTML show?
All three pages declared canonical URLs on starry-research-labs.vercel.app. Their hreflang links used that deployment host too. The custom domain was serving the pages, but the metadata still preferred the old host.
Both /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml returned HTTP 404. The missing robots file did not itself block Google crawling. The missing sitemap meant that this public discovery list was unavailable.
Why did we change the site?
The launch work moves the preferred URLs and language links to starryresearchlabs.com, adds a sitemap and gives each English operating note its own address. The homepage's note cards previously opened dialogs and had no article href.
These changes make the intended pages easier to discover and inspect. They do not establish that a search engine has indexed them or that an AI engine will cite them. Those outcomes need their own observations after release.
How can you repeat the audit?
Run the GEO readiness audit on your homepage. Open the reported canonical and compare its host with the final public domain. Use the hreflang checker to inspect translated equivalents and their return links.
Save the timestamp and results before and after your deployment. Then use Search Console's URL inspection to see which canonical Google selects when the new version has been crawled.
Sources and method
External references were reviewed for this guide. Examples and tool workflows are our own. The launch audit records our public website observations, with no ranking or citation claim.