Canonical URL
Canonical URL tag is used to avoid duplicate contents filter in search engine likes Google. In other words It is the way to declare your official URL of the pages.
What is Duplicate contents?
Suppose your website has the two pages with similar content then Google will mark your one page as a duplicate contents if you are not aware about Canonical URL tag.
Why we need Canonical URL ?
I am going to explain this through this example . Suppose an online website who has several pages that is listing the same set of products. Suppose one page display products that are sorted in alphabetical order whiles other page display the same products that are sorted by price.
For example
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=pastaid=1234567&sort=alpha&sessionid=5678asfasdfasfd
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=pastaid=1234567&sort=price&sessionid=5678asfasdfasfd
Now if you do not use canonical URL then Google will index both these pages & your site will be flagged by Google.
Limitation of Canonical tag
Google is getting smarter day by day before launching new features.
- We can use Canonical tag only on our domain.
- The second thing that we need to take care before using Canonical tag is that the content of canonical url must be same to the page that’s points to it.
How to make Google to pick the desired URL ?
By using canonical tag we can make Google to pick the desired URL.
Canonical tag is so easy to use. It is a simple tag that is defined in section of your web pages.
How it look like when you define canonical tag in the section of your web page ?
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/products/pasta”/>
Can be used rel=”canonical” as a redirect?
Yes we can used rel=”canonical” as a redirect.
