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Canonical Tag Confusion

by Trix8
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi All,

I'm a bit confused with implementing the canonical tags. From my understanding a canonical tag is placed to avoid duplicated content and should be placed on the Non Original page. So for example if we have a page such us www.example.co.uk/original-page/ and this url is quite similar to www.example.co.uk/almost-the-same/ the canonical tag will be placed on the second page and on the code we should place something like: <link rel="canonical" href="www.example.co.uk/original-page/" />. Am I right?

Thanks,
T
#canonical #confusion #tag
  • Profile picture of the author Tony Marriott
    See this page for a full and detailed explanation

    https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/
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  • Profile picture of the author Trix8
    Thanks Tony!

    Why then many pages like ASOS for example - have on the head of their home page a code with canonical tag that its pointing to the same home domain?

    ASOS | Online Shopping for the Latest Clothes & Fashion

    Thanks,
    T
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    • Profile picture of the author Tony Marriott
      See this section in the document I referred to earlier

      "Should a page have a self-referencing canonical URL?

      In the example above, we make the non-canonical page link to the canonical version. But should a page set a rel canonical for itself? This is a highly debated topic amongst SEOs. At Yoast, we have a strong preference for having a canonical link element on every page and Google has confirmed that's best. The reason is that most CMSes will allow URL parameters without changing the content. So all of these URLs would show the same content:"

      Basically add a canonical reference of every page that has duplicate content including the original source URL (pointing to itself). This ensures no ambiguity by Google.
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      • Profile picture of the author Trix8
        Hi Tony,

        Many thanks for your explanations. Its more clear now

        Cheers,
        T
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  • Profile picture of the author zorbee
    Canonical tag should be place where you think page is original and you want google bot index as real page.
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    Salesforce Consulting Company
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  • Profile picture of the author Madhukar B
    Canonical tag should be placed in Home page of your website and it's not for duplicate content it says the same will be fetched on sub-pages of the website.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tony Marriott
      Yes it is for duplicate content..

      Quote from Goole webmaster blog

      "Including a rel=canonical link in your webpage is a strong hint to search engines your about preferred version to index among duplicate pages on the web. It's supported by several search engines, including Yahoo!, Bing, and Google. The rel=canonical link consolidates indexing properties from the duplicates, like their inbound links, as well as specifies which URL you'd like displayed in search results. However, rel=canonical can be a bit tricky because it's not very obvious when there's a misconfiguration."
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