This basically tells search engines: 'I'm the only version of this page, and only I should be indexed.'. If there's only one version of a page, make sure the canonical URL is self-referencing. The canonical URL can either reference itself, or reference another page. Google, Bing and Yahoo heavily rely on the canonical URL to understand what pages to show and hide in search engine result pages. There's no conceivable scenario in which it's a bad idea to include a canonical URL. No credit card needed When to use a canonical URL?

External duplicate content happens when duplicate or very similar pages on different domains exist. Internal duplicate content happens within your website. With the canonical URL you can prevent duplicate content, both internally and externally.

For the sake of ease, when we refer to the canonical HTML element we'll call it canonical URL. Synonyms for canonical URLĪlthough their meaning is not the same, the following terms are often used to refer to the canonical URL: canonical tag, canonical link, rel canonical or rel='canonical'. When page A has a canonical link element referencing page B, you say that page A has been canonicalized.Ĭanonicalization is the process in which a preferred version of a page is selected over multiple other versions. Link element rel='canonical', often called canonical URL, is an HTML element which helps prevent duplicate content by informing search engines to prefer one document over other identical or similar documents. Frequently asked questions about canonical URL.What are the limitations of canonical URL?.What are best practices around canonical URLs?.

Rss url meaning