Matan · SEO · Technical
Canonical tags
rel=canonical tells crawlers which URL is the preferred copy when parameters, trailing slashes or duplicates exist.
Pass condition in our engine: The page includes a non-empty rel="canonical" href.
1. Problem description
Without a canonical, Google may pick a parameterised or HTTP variant as the main URL. Wrong canonicals (pointing to another article, or to the homepage) can deindex the page you actually want to rank.
2. Most common causes
- The theme never outputs link rel=canonical.
- The canonical points at a different hostname or http://.
- Pagination or filters omit a self-referencing canonical.
- A plugin writes a canonical to the homepage on every template.
3. How to fix it
- Output a self-referencing absolute HTTPS canonical in <head>.
- For true duplicates, point all copies at the one preferred URL.
- Do not canonicalise unique articles to the homepage.
- Keep canonical, hreflang and sitemap URLs consistent.
Test this check
We fetch only this URL (plus robots.txt / llms.txt at the domain root when the check needs them). We do not crawl the rest of the site like a full report.
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