A practical checklist for canonical URLs

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. Run through this the next time canonical URLs comes up.

Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

The checklist

• Canonicals tell search engines which version is the real one
• Parameters and print views create duplicates quietly
• Self-referencing canonicals are a safe default
• Someone is named as the owner
• There is a date to review it again

The reason this keeps coming up

Canonicals tell search engines which version is the real one. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

How to tell if yours is fine

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Three things worth confirming about canonical URLs before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Parameters and print views create duplicates quietly — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.