What is a Canonical URL?
If there are multiple URLs for a single page, the canonical URL is the “preferred” version for search engines. Designating a canonical URL helps prevent duplicate pages.
More About Canonical URLs
It’s normal to have pages that you can access via multiple URLs. For example, visitors might want to access a website by typing in either “www.yourdomain.com” or “yourdomain.com”.
When you designate a canonical URL, you tell search engines which version of these addresses they should consider as the primary. That means they’ll only crawl that URL, preventing them from indexing the same page multiple times.
If you don’t designate a canonical URL, search engines will do it automatically for you. When search crawlers find multiple instances of the same page, they’ll try to identify which version offers a complete set of information and set that as the canonical option.
