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The Internet Compass

Marketing

Canonical URL

A canonical URL is the version of a page a site designates as authoritative using a rel=canonical link element, telling search engines which address to index when equivalent content is reachable at multiple URLs.

Duplicate addresses arise routinely from query parameters, pagination, filtering and protocol or trailing-slash variants.

Canonicals are a strong hint rather than a directive: search engines may ignore them when page content diverges substantially from the declared canonical.