Free Canonical Tag Generator

Generate a canonical tag pointing at the version of a page you want indexed, so duplicate URLs do not compete with each other.

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Your Canonical Tag:

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About Canonical Tags

What a canonical tag is for

A canonical tag names the version of a page you want indexed when the same content is reachable at more than one address. It is a statement of preference, and search engines usually honour it.

Duplicates arrive without anyone creating them: a trailing slash, http and https, www and bare, a tracking parameter, a printer-friendly version, a product reachable through two categories.

Left unresolved, those versions compete with each other and split the signals that should be accumulating on one page.

Getting it right

Use an absolute URL, including the protocol.
Point at a page that returns 200, not a redirect or a 404.
Give every page a self-referencing canonical, including the preferred one.
Keep it consistent with your sitemap and your internal links.
One canonical per page. Two is treated as none.

Common mistakes

Every page canonicalised to the homepage, which removes the whole site from results.
Canonical pointing one way and a redirect pointing the other.
Relative URLs, which resolve unpredictably.
Canonicalising paginated pages to page one, hiding everything after it.
Treating it as a directive. It is a hint, and a page whose content differs will be indexed anyway.

Canonicals and duplicate content

There is no penalty for duplicate content in the sense people usually mean. What happens is quieter: signals divide, the wrong version ranks, and neither performs as well as one consolidated page would.

That is the problem a canonical solves, and it is also why it is worth being deliberate rather than adding one everywhere by template and hoping.

Using the canonical tag generator

Enter the URL you want indexed and paste the tag into the head of every page that should defer to it - including that page itself.

Match it exactly to how the page is actually served, since a trailing slash or a missing www makes it a different URL.

Where to go next

Check the tag once it is live with the canonical checker, confirm the URL it points at returns a status code of 200, and review your XML sitemap lists the same version.

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