: Should the canonical tag point to the rewritten URL of the page even if it doesn't have a valid directory structure? The structure of my url is http://www.somesomewebsite.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=12.

@Annie201

When making URLs available to the public, always try the friendly URL approach instead of the old fashioned approach. This means you want:
www.somewebsite.com/product-category/12/this-is-my-product-name/


I am doing a permanent redirect (301) to www.somewebsite.com/product-category/12/this-is-my-product-name/. However if the user types just www.somewebsite.com/product-category/12/ he/she is given a 404 error.


This URL:
www.somewebsite.com/product-category/12/

doesn't get crawled by anything unless it is advertised anywhere on the web (including your website) without the "nofollow" keyword included in the anchor tag pointing to the link.

For example, submitting the above link to a sitemap will cause the search engine to crawl it.

The above link producing a 404 does not need attention at this time until you are almost ready to make it public.

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@Pope3001725

The canonical URL should be the URL you want Google to show in their search results. So:
www.somewebsite.com/product-category/12/this-is-my-product-name/

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