Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Sometimes a web page can be reached by using more than one URL. In such cases, Google tries to
determine the best URL to display in search and to use in other ways. We call this the
“canonical URL.” There are ways site owners can help us better determine what should be the
canonical URLs for their content.
If you suspect we’ve not selected the best canonical URL for your content, you can check by
entering your page’s address into the
URL Inspection tool
within
Search Console. It
will show you the
Google-selected canonical.
If you believe there’s a better canonical that should be used, follow the steps on our
duplicate URLs help page
on how to suggest a preferred choice for consideration.
Please be aware that if you search using the site: or inurl: commands,
you will be shown the domain you specified in those, even if these aren’t the Google-selected
canonical. This happens because we’re fulfilling the exact request entered. Behind-the-scenes, we
still use the Google-selected canonical, including for when people see pages without using the
site: or inurl: commands.
We’ve also changed URL Inspection tool so that it will display any Google-selected canonical for a
URL, not just those for properties you manage in Search Console. With this change, we’re also
retiring the info: command. This was an alternative way of discovering canonicals. It
was relatively underused, and URL Inspection tool provides a more comprehensive solution to help
publishers with URLs.
How we apply this
We archive Search Central announcements because client questions often trace back to a change that was announced years ago. Reading the original is faster than reconstructing it from second-hand summaries.
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