Canonical
Website and technology
Website and technology
A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the main version of a page that is reachable at several addresses.
Filters, sort orders, tracking parameters and http/https variants easily produce dozens of URLs with the same content. A canonical points them all at one address so signals don't fragment.
The canonical should point at the page itself unless it deliberately is a variant. A canonical accidentally pointing at the homepage effectively removes that page from view.
Related terms
- IndexingIndexing is a crawled page being stored in the search engine's database. Only indexed pages can appear in results.
- HreflangHreflang is the annotation that tells search engines which page belongs to which language or region, so they show the right version.
- Technical SEOTechnical SEO is the part of SEO about findability and readability for search engines: crawling, indexing, speed, structure and error handling.