GLOSSARY
Canonical
IN ONE SENTENCE
A canonical declares the preferred URL for one piece of content, consolidating signals from duplicate addresses.
A canonical declares the preferred URL for one piece of content, consolidating signals from duplicate addresses.
01
In detail
The worst case is two URLs for one piece of content each canonicalising to itself, which tells crawlers they are two different pages and splits the signals. When a URL rule changes, the correct fix is a 301 from old to new, not a canonical patch.
Updated 2026-08-06