SEO Tycoon

**siddu** · 10-11-2010, 03:14 AM

What is a canonical url? Do you have to use such a weird word, anyway?

**ggo4th** · 03:20 PM

Want a weirder word? Try canonicalization! lol Or, URL canonicalization. It's a weird word, but the definition's easy. It's the "one" url that your every page on your site is designated. Like, for mine, it's grantgofourth.com/ So, every page that's referenced sitewide throughout my site subscribes to the same policy of grantgofourth.com/*.*.

If someone points to me via www grantgofourth.com/index.html Guess where that gets redirected? Yep. grantgofourth.com

I hope that helps! It's a fairly important concept to grasp.

**Social-Media** · 10:55 AM

Basically, the search engines don't rank sites... they don't rank web pages... they rank URLs. As such, every page on your site should have one URL that is used to render it called the canonical (or preferred) URL. All other non-canonical URLs that can be used to render that page should be 301 redirected to the canonical URL.

If you do not deal with your site's canonicalization issues, you will end up with duplicate content and more importantly, split PageRank/link juice.

For example, say you have a page on your site at /folder/index.html. There are many ways you might render this page:

http://example.com/folder
http://example.com/folder/
http://example.com/folder/index.html
http://www.example.com/folder
http://www.example.com/folder/
http://www.example.com/folder/index.html

The search engines treat all of the above as different pages. Now further assume that 10 different sites link to each of the above URLs. The search engines see this as 6 pages with 10 links each.

You need rules for selecting the canonical version of various URLs on your site so that you can 301 redirect the remaining non-canonical versions. It doesn't matter really which you pick, only that you have a canonical URL for each page on your site and implement the redirects for the non-canonicals.

I like to use www, always show the trailing '/' when a folder contains a default document, and to hide the default document name (index.html). So my canonical URL would be http://www.example.com/folder/. And I would implement the following redirects:

http://example.com/folder --> 301 --> http://www.example.com/folder/
http://example.com/folder/ --> 301 --> http://www.example.com/folder/
http://example.com/folder/index.html --> 301 --> http://www.example.com/folder/
http://www.example.com/folder --> 301 --> http://www.example.com/folder/
http://www.example.com/folder/ *** NO REDIRECT - ALREADY CANONICAL FORM ***
http://www.example.com/folder/index.html --> 301 --> http://www.example.com/folder/

By implementing the redirects, you tell the search engines to transfer credit for all of the inbound links pointing to the non-canonical versions of the URL over to the canonical URL. This means the search engines see only ONE URL with 60 inbound links (instead of 6 URLs with 10 links each). This can make a huge difference in your rankings.
If you want to learn more you can check out this post on URL canonicalization.

**anjstudio** · 10-11-2010, 08:33 PM

A new "canonical url tag" to help webmasters and site owners eliminate self-created duplicate content in the index is, in my opinion, the biggest change to SEO best practices since the emergence of Sitemaps.

**full house** · 10-11-2010, 10:14 PM

how often do you guys use canonical, I haven't did anything like this...

**butterflyseo** · 10-11-2010, 10:55 PM

Quote:

By implementing the redirects, you tell the search engines to transfer credit for all of the inbound links pointing to the non-canonical versions of the URL over to the canonical URL. This means the search engines see only ONE URL with 60 inbound links (instead of 6 URLs with 10 links each). This can make a huge difference in your rankings.
If you want to learn more you can check out this post on URL canonicalization.

Well said in my opinion..

**sandeep Kumar** · 10-12-2010, 12:41 AM

Canonical URL: The search friendly URL that you want the search engines to treat as authoritative. In other words, a canonical URL is the URL that you want visitors to see.

**Darkness23** · 06:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sandeep Kumar

Canonical URL: The search friendly URL that you want the search engines to treat as authoritative. In other words, a canonical URL is the URL that you want visitors to see.

Or a redirect. You are telling the visitors and spidy that this page
one-two[dot]com/index.html be redirected to www[dot]one-two[dot]com
the one you selected as your permanent url. Though I have some
experience that the redirection may affect your PR. Just like a
forum that I have seen, it was PR 3 way back then, but when they
do the 301 redirect they lost the PR and become PR0.

**Atcomaart** · 10-12-2010, 05:19 AM

Canonical URL means www to non www if you want your site redirect with non www to www so you can use canonical URL...

**chrisg4** · 10-12-2010, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Atcomaart

Canonical URL means www to non www if you want your site redirect with non www to www so you can use canonical URL...

So after that we don't need to redirect our example.com/index.html to orginal version?

**oneworldtech** · 10-12-2010, 06:45 AM

Basically, the search engines don't rank sites... they don't rank web pages... they rank URLs. As such, every page on your site should have one URL that is used to render it called the canonical (or preferred) URL.

**php developer** · 10-12-2010, 07:22 AM

Generally search engines count non www and www. different urls so, better way use any of one them like if someone type abc.com to redirect to www.abc.com.

**eashinawelch** · 10-12-2010, 09:35 AM

Canonical url is the url that you want visitors to visit that. Basically canonical url refers to home page but now days it's all based on the popularity of the page, so people generally select that url as canonical which has got good content and which is popular.

**Dheeram** · 10-13-2010, 02:38 AM

The primary domain that we want to use is known as the Canonical URL.

**fresk** · 10-23-2010, 05:34 AM

i think it is the simplest definition you have shared here.

**flourtech** · 10-23-2010, 06:58 AM

There are three URL write differently , but Search engine taking it differently
these URL is called canonical URL

www.url*com
url*com
http://url*com canonical url are

**Viresh** · 10-25-2010, 05:13 AM

Canonical URL the search engine friendly URL that you want the search engines to treat as authoritative. In other words, a canonical URL is the URL that you want visitors to see.

**Johnkitty** · 10-25-2010, 10:20 PM

Canonical URL is a kind of your redirection from www. to non www. In this way, when you adjust the URL, you can save your backlinks. All backlinks will come from both www. and non www.

**jerryhannah** · 10-27-2010, 02:02 AM

If you type it into an URL of course it's not going to work. I also had a little doubt myself, but after reading a bit more on Google related subjets, I think search engines are smart enough to figure it out.

**ENchat** · 10-27-2010, 02:07 AM

Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls.