: How to use rel='canonical' properly I have 3 URLS that serve the same data: www.example.com/product/foo www.example.com/product/foo?id=1 www.example.com?product=foo For Google's sake I want the URL

@Hamaas447

This is a great instance of what canonical links are for. In the words of Google (presumably in the article above) you giving them a hint that you want the page to show up in SERPs as your the format you designate.

Additionally, it helps you keep your traffic from being diluted (in the eyes of a search engine) as if these are 3 separate pages and would alleviate any chance that the content would be considered duplicate.

A word of caution though, if there are pages with categories of products (multiple products on a page) those pages/products should not include canonical links. I don't know if it's 'official' but some WordPress SEO plug-ins use rel="bookmark" on the permalinks (instead of canonical) on pages where there are multiple listings. I'd assume the same would be wise for products.

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@Dunderdale272

There's no circularity implied by having <link rel='canonical' href='http://www.example.com/product/foo' /> appear as www.example.com/product/foo.
That's the intent. You're saying "the best URL" for this page is www.example.com/product/foo, so when the search engines hit www.example.com/product/foo?id=1, or www.example.com?product=foo, it will get that code and say "Aha! This is really that canonical page, I'll make that one official." On the page itself, it just means "Yes, this is a page, and this is the best URL for this page."


More about rel="canonical" from Google
existing-rel-values at microformats.org

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