Canonical URL

What is Canonical URL?

Canonical URLs are used to avoid content that can be the same or repetitive. These URLs are the main version of a webpage that Google indexes for this purpose. Thus, they are also called the principal and primary versions of web pages. The uses of canonical URLs can be understood as follows:-

  • Combining link equity into the main page by directing all link juices to the URL. 
  • Finds the site with the primary source that hosts the original content. 
  • Saves crawl resources and ignores duplicate content.  

Let’s follow an example:-

  • https://example.com/shoes
  • https://example.com/shoes?color=blue
  • https://example.com/shoes?sort=price

Suppose the first one is the main version of the webpage; you’d be choosing it as the canonical URL, and you have to add the code below, with which you can prioritise this page in the search results. 

  • <link rel=”canonical” href=”https://example.com/shoes” />