SEO Wiki

Canonical URL (rel=canonical)

in short

Canonical is a tag that tells search engines the primary version of a page among duplicates.

rel="canonical" is an HTML tag in the <head> that tells Google which URL to treat as the main one.

How it works

Used for filters, UTM parameters, sorting and pages with identical content. Google treats canonical as a strong hint.

Why it matters

  • Consolidates ranking signals
  • Prevents duplicate indexing
  • Saves crawl budget

How Accendix handles it

We configure canonical and hreflang for multilingual sites and filtered catalogs.

Related pages

IndexingTechnical SEO
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All Wiki pagesUpdated: October 26, 2026