Canonical URL Generator
Work out the right canonical for a messy URL — parameters, pagination, trailing slashes, www — and get the tag to paste.
Nothing you type here is uploaded, stored or sent anywhere. It all runs in your browser.
Rules worth knowing
- Every page should canonical to itself. A self-referencing canonical on a clean URL is the normal case, not an edge case.
- Canonical is a hint, not a directive. Google can ignore it. Conflicting signals — an internal link to a different version, a redirect, a sitemap entry — will beat it.
- Use absolute URLs. Relative canonicals are legal and consistently misread.
- Never canonical page 2 to page 1. That tells Google the products on page 2 do not exist. Each page in a series canonicals to itself.
- Do not combine canonical with noindex on the same page. The two instructions contradict each other.
Questions people ask
Is duplicate content a penalty?
No. There is no duplicate content penalty, and there never has been one for ordinary technical duplication. What actually happens is that Google clusters the identical URLs, indexes one and drops the rest, and the links pointing at the discarded versions do far less than they should. A canonical is you choosing which one survives instead of letting Google guess.
Search Console says "Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical than user". What now?
It means your other signals outvoted your tag. Check what your internal links point at, what is in the sitemap, and where your redirects land — if all three name a different URL from the canonical, Google believes them. Fix the signals rather than repeating the tag.
Canonical or 301 redirect?
Redirect when the old URL has no reason to stay reachable: it is the stronger, unambiguous signal. Canonicalise when both URLs must keep working — a filtered listing, a print view, a page reachable through two categories. Doing both to the same pair is not a belt-and-braces measure, it is a contradiction.
Can a canonical point at a different domain?
Yes, and cross-domain canonicals are the correct tool for syndication. If a publisher reruns your article, the canonical on their copy should name yours. Getting that agreed up front is worth more than any link you would have negotiated, and it is the one thing most syndication deals forget.
Does the canonical stop parameters from being crawled?
No. Google still crawls the tagged URL, reads the tag and then consolidates. If crawl budget on parameter variants is a genuine problem, that is a robots.txt or a URL-design question. A canonical governs what gets indexed, not what gets fetched.
Guides for this tool
Related tools
Duplicate URLs splitting your link equity?
Canonicals consolidate what you already have. Building more is the other half.