Canonical URL Checker

A canonical URL is the "official" version of a web page that you want search engines to index and show in search results. You specify it using a link tag in your page's head section that looks like this:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/your-page/">

When Google sees this tag, it knows that even if it finds the same content at different URLs (like with tracking parameters or session IDs), it should treat the canonical URL as the main version. This prevents duplicate content issues and consolidates your ranking signals to one URL.

Canonical tags solve a bunch of SEO problems that can seriously hurt your rankings if left unchecked.

• Duplicate content happens more than you'd think. The same page might be accessible with or without a trailing slash, with different URL parameters, or through HTTP and HTTPS. Without a canonical tag, Google has to guess which version to rank.
• Link equity gets split when people link to different versions of your page. A canonical tag tells Google to consolidate all those backlinks to one URL.
• Crawl budget gets wasted when Googlebot has to crawl multiple versions of the same content. Canonical tags help search engines focus on the pages that actually matter.
• Syndicated content can cause problems if you republish articles on other sites. The canonical tag points back to your original, so you get credit for the content.

A lot of sites mess up their canonical tags in ways that can actually make SEO problems worse instead of better.

• Using relative URLs instead of absolute URLs is a common mistake. Always include the full URL with the protocol (https://).
• Pointing to a different page entirely defeats the purpose. The canonical should point to the current page or a very similar version of it.
• Having multiple canonical tags on one page confuses search engines. You should only have one.
• Canonicalizing to a 404 page or a redirect is bad. The canonical URL should return a 200 status code.
• Mixing HTTP and HTTPS in your canonicals can cause indexing issues. Stick with HTTPS if your site supports it.
• Forgetting to update canonicals after a site migration leaves you pointing to URLs that no longer exist.

Using this canonical checker is pretty straightforward.

1. Enter the actual URL of your page in the first field. This helps the tool check if your canonical matches the page URL.
2. Paste your page's HTML into the text area. You can paste the entire page source or just the head section.
3. Click "Check Canonical" and the tool will analyze your canonical tag setup.
4. Review the results to see if there are any issues that need fixing.

If you don't have a canonical tag or if there's a problem with yours, the tool will generate the correct code for you to copy and paste into your site.