what is canonical url?

[terryward]

One website homepage contains several url like (www)samplewebsite.com or samplewebsite.com. Canonical url is the chosen url to be crawled by Google. If one url has canonical tag, this means that other url directed to the same page are just copies and search engines wont be confused on what url to crawl.

[jayanta1]

Canonical url simply means the preferred urls which lead to your article . Everyone knows Google penalizes websites for having "duplicate content."Canonical URLs are used to prevent this.

[Emmaballet20]

Interesting article! I just get some nice idea on how to use the proper canonical method. Thanks so much, I think this will help me a lot in SEO

[christina21maria]

Canonical URL defined as the preferred URL for the page content to be indexed in the Major Search Engines. Canonical URL is used by the Major Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Many websites have two or more links of the same content with different parameter. In this time Search Engines are confused about Which One is needed to be Index?

[stonewood]

When the same content is available from two (or more) different URLs, it is called duplicate content. Search engines like Google have decided they don’t like duplicate content and pages with duplicate content don’t rank well. In order to avoid this duplication we require canonical tags. It is placed in the header section of the webpage.

[khushbunanavati]

Everyone knows Google penalizes websites for having "duplicate content." So, what happens when you have two URLs that point to the same page? At this point canonical is the solution of the problem.Since two URLs are being used and the page content is the same for both of them, Google thinks you have two pages with duplicate content.At this point canonical is the solution of the problem.
Canonical URLs are used to prevent this. When Google crawls the page, it will see the Canonical URL and this is what Google recognizes as the "official" URL of the page. It will use this URL to index the site instead of the one used to access the page.

[basha15]

When Google crawls the page, it will see the Canonical URL and this is what Google recognizes as the "official" URL of the page. It will use this URL to index the site instead of the one used to access the page.

[Rajiv Jain]

There is more than one URL that can be used to access any given website page. While this is extremely useful in certain situations, like when you want to view your page before the domain propagates, it can sometimes cause undesired effects. Luckily most search engines, like Google and Bing, understand that every page has multiple working URL

[Monikasahu]

http://domainname.com/shirt.html and http://domainname.com/apparel/shirt.html might go to the exact same product page. Since two URLs are being used and the page content is the same for both of them, Google thinks you have two pages with duplicate content. Canonical URLs are used to prevent this.

[spyindiaanu]

Canonical is the majors issues while you not aware about it. If you main page or home page is not resolved by the canonical then it may always problem to rank in major search engine. so keep in mind that you resolved by fixed and also you used 301 permanent redirection which is helps to maintain your site by canonical issue.