What is Canonical Tag?

Answered across 5 episodes of The Best SEO Podcast

The short answer

An HTML tag that consolidates signals from multiple URLs, telling Google which version of a page to index while skipping duplicates and outdated versions.

How experts on the show define it

An HTML tag that consolidates signals from multiple URLs, telling Google which version of a page to index while skipping duplicates and outdated versions.

From 10 Steps To Boost Your Site’s Crawlability And Indexability Ep. 557

An HTML element that points to the originator of content. With mobile-first indexing, desktop pages should use a canonical tag pointing to the mobile version so the mobile URL is treated as the original source.

From Mobile-First Indexing, Best Practices with Chris Burres and Matthew Bertram #437

A tag used to tell Google which version of a URL is the preferred one, preventing duplicate content issues. The hosts describe it as related to 301 redirects.

From Google Boost - SEO Podcast - Number 82

An HTML tag placed on non-target pages to tell search engines which URL is the authoritative version, used when 301 redirects are not available.

From B2B SEO Versus B2C SEO - Internet Marketing Podcast 105

An HTML tag that tells search engines to assign ranking value to a specified page while keeping the original page live, used as an alternative to a 301 redirect.

From Best SEO Practices Google Local Places - Internet Marketing Podcast - Number 93

Episodes that cover this

Related answers

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