What Is a Canonical Tag?
A canonical tag (rel=“canonical”) is a snippet of HTML that tells search engines which version of a page is the “master” copy when duplicate or very similar content exists at multiple URLs.
Why it matters
Canonical tags prevent duplicate content problems that can split ranking signals across several URLs or waste crawl budget. By pointing all variants to a single preferred URL, you consolidate link equity and tell Google exactly which page to index and rank. This is critical for ecommerce sites, paginated content, and pages reachable through multiple URL parameters.
Example
If a product is accessible at both ?color=blue and ?color=red versions of the same page, a canonical tag pointing both to the clean base URL ensures Google treats them as one page instead of duplicates.
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