Canonical Tag Generator
Turn a page URL into a correct rel="canonical" tag, with a check for the mistakes that quietly make canonicals useless.
Generate the tag
Your canonical tag
Enter a URL above to generate the tag.
When to use a canonical tag
On every page — pointing at itself
The default. A self-referencing canonical costs one line and protects the page the moment a URL variant appears: a tracking parameter, a print view, a scraped copy on another domain.
Filtered and sorted listings
Category pages with ?sort=price or ?colour=blue are near-duplicates of the unfiltered page. Canonicalise them to the clean version so ranking signals pool there instead of spreading across dozens of near-identical URLs.
Syndicated or republished articles
If your article is republished on Medium, LinkedIn or a partner site, the copy should carry a canonical pointing back to your original. That is a cross-domain canonical, and it is exactly what the tag was designed for.
The same product in two categories
When one product is reachable at two paths, pick one as canonical and point the other at it. Better still, serve it from one URL and redirect the other.
When NOT to use one
Do not canonicalise paginated pages to page one — each page has different content, and you lose access to everything after page one. Do not canonicalise every page to your homepage. And do not use a canonical where a 301 redirect is the honest answer.
How it works
- Paste the URL of the version of the page you want Google to index and rank.
- The tool normalises it and flags the usual problems —
httpinstead ofhttps, tracking parameters left on, a mismatched trailing slash. - Copy the generated tag into the
<head>of every duplicate or near-duplicate version of that page, including the canonical page itself.
Why this matters
The same content is almost always reachable at more than one address: with and without www, with and without a trailing slash, with a session ID, with UTM parameters attached. Each variant is a separate URL to a search engine, and each one splits the ranking signals that should have been pooled on one page.
A canonical tag consolidates them. It says "index this one", and the links and authority pointing at the variants get credited to it.
The important detail is that every page should carry a self-referencing canonical, pointing at itself. That single line is what protects you when someone shares your page with a UTM string attached, or when a scraper copies it — which is why the UTM builder and this tool belong together.
Questions
Should every page have a canonical tag?
Yes. Even with no duplicates today, a self-referencing canonical costs one line and protects you the moment a URL variant appears — a tracking parameter, a print view, a scraped copy.
Is a canonical tag a redirect?
No. It is a hint, and Google can ignore it if other signals disagree. A 301 redirect is an instruction and moves the visitor too. Use a redirect when the duplicate should not exist; use a canonical when both URLs need to keep working.
Can a canonical point to a different domain?
Yes — that is how syndicated content is meant to work. If you republish an article on Medium or a partner site, the copy should carry a canonical pointing back to your original.
What are the most common canonical mistakes?
Pointing every page on the site at the homepage — that tells Google the rest of the site is duplicate content. Using a relative URL, which is technically allowed but resolves unpredictably. Mixing http and https, or www and non-www, so the canonical points at a URL that redirects.
And canonicalising a page that is also blocked in robots.txt — the tag can never be read, so it does nothing.
Does the canonical URL have to match exactly?
It should point at a URL that returns 200, not one that redirects. If your site serves /page/ with a trailing slash, the canonical must have the slash too.