Canonical Link Element

Defining The Authoritative URL

Canonical Link Element code clarifies the exact formulation of the correct URL. For most websites, typing any of:

http://www.example.com
http://example.com
http://www.example.com/index.html

will display the home page. However, these are all different URLs (Universal Resource Locator - or, in simple terms, web address), and search engines may treat them as different URLs or choose a version that you don't prefer. Canoncialization simply involves picking the URL you want, and telling search engines that this is your prefered URL.

If you do not specify which URL is your Canonical URL, you may be dividing your Page Rank among multiple versions of your page and hurting your search results.