What Are Canonical Tags?

Canonical tags?tell search engines which version of a page is the primary or master version. For example, if a website has two or more versions of a single page, adding a canonical tag tells Google what version should be indexed and what versions are duplicates.

If you’re not familiar,?canonical tags?tell Google which version of a page is the preferred, primary version.?

For example, say you have a product category page for “men’s jeans” located at /clothing/men/jeans, and that page allows visitors to sort by price: low to high.

This might change the URL to /clothing/men/jeans?sortBy=PriceLow. Putting the jeans in a different order didn’t change the content of the page, so you wouldn’t want /clothing/men/jeans?sortBy=PriceLow and /clothing/men/jeans both to be indexed.?

You’d likely add a?canonical tag?on /clothing/men/jeans?sortBy=PriceLow, indicating that /clothing/men/jeans is the primary version of that page and the other version is a duplicate.