Canonical Tag Generator

Telling search engines which duplicate URL is the real one

The same content often answers at several addresses: with tracking parameters, over HTTP and HTTPS, with or without www. A canonical link element tells search engines which of those versions you prefer. This page writes that element for you. Type the preferred address and it returns a single link line with rel set to canonical and the URL safely escaped for an HTML attribute. It only formats: the address is never requested or tested, and the sole check is that the box is not empty. No data leaves the browser.

Step by step

1. Decide which version of the page should be indexed, then type that full address, protocol and domain included, into the Canonical URL box.
2. Press Generate Tag to produce the line.
3. Press Copy and add the line to the head section of that page and of each variant that duplicates it.
4. Reload the live page, open its source, and search for "canonical" to be sure it appears once.

What to watch for

The tool happily accepts a path with no domain, a typo, or an address that redirects, and it writes a tag for each of them. Google's documentation asks for absolute URLs, and a canonical aimed at a redirect, an error page or a noindexed page contradicts itself. If your query string contains an ampersand, the output shows it as &. That is the proper way to write it inside an HTML attribute, and browsers and crawlers read it as a plain ampersand.

Look for an existing canonical before you add yours. Themes, SEO plugins and ecommerce platforms often print one automatically, and conflicting tags weaken the signal. Placement matters as well: Google ignores a canonical that appears in the body.

Questions people ask

Should a page have a canonical tag pointing to itself?

A self-referencing canonical is common practice and harmless. It helps when the page gets linked with parameters appended, such as UTM tags, because every version then names the clean URL.

Is a canonical tag the same as a redirect?

No. A 301 sends visitors and crawlers to the other URL, while a canonical leaves both pages reachable and only suggests which one to index. Google treats it as a strong signal, but it can pick another URL when the rest of your signals disagree.

Can I use it for articles syndicated on other sites?

Google's documentation says the canonical element is not the recommended approach for syndication, because syndicated copies are often quite different pages. Its suggested fix is for partners to block indexing of their copy, for example with noindex.

Further reading: Canonical Is a Relative URL: Why It Is Risky and How to Fix It and User-Declared Canonical Not Selected: How to Fix It.

The same tool is also published on the static mirror at seoprocheck.github.io, and the rest of the set is on the free tools page.