Websites sometimes have identical pages across two or more URLs. It presents a dilemma for search engines to know which page to prioritize in rankings. That’s the purpose of a canonical tag — rel= “canonical.” It tells Google, Bing, and others which identical (or near identical) page to rank by pointing the tag(s) from the duplicates to the original.
Yet the tag is often misunderstood and misused. What follows are dos and don’ts for deploying canonical tags.
Not Definitive
A canonical tag is only a hint to Google. It’s not definitive and shouldn’t be the first choice when correcting duplicate content. Google uses many signals to pick the representative URL. The content owner’s instruction is only one of them.
Others include:
- Internal links. The duplicate page receiving the most internal links is presumably the most important.
- XML sitemaps. Duplicate pages in a sitemap are typically the priority over non-sitemap versions.
- Encryption. Google usually chooses the https version over http.
- Amount and quality of a page’s content. Google refers to a page’s primary content as the “centerpiece.” When the centerpiece is similar or identical to other pages, Google attempts to know which is more useful and selects that page in search results.
Google may use a combination of the above signals. And pointing a rel=” canonical” tag (e.g., rel= “canonical” href= “https://www.xyz.com/heres-an-article”) from one page to another is likely pointless (to Google) if the site structure...
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