Canonicals
The canonical tag is the primary mechanism for telling search engines which URL to treat as the authoritative version of a page — directing ranking signals to the right URL. When canonicals are missing, broken, pointing to non-existent pages, or misconfigured, the benefits of canonicalization are lost or actively harmful. These twelve checks audit every dimension of canonical tag implementation, from basic presence through structural validity and logical correctness.
No canonical link element — pages with this issue have no self-referencing canonical.
The canonical URL is malformed or not parseable as a valid URL.
Page points its canonical at a different URL — it is canonicalized away from itself.
The canonical URL target returns a non-200 status — canonicalization fails.
The canonical target is a redirect — search engines prefer canonicals pointing to the final URL.
Canonical element found outside <head> — may be ignored by search engines.
The canonical href includes a # fragment — fragments are not sent to the server and are ignored.
The canonical href is a relative path — absolute URLs are required for reliable canonicalization.
The canonical target URL has no internal links pointing to it — may signal a non-existent canonical.
The canonical link element has an invalid or malformed attribute structure.
More than one canonical tag — search engines take only the first; conflict creates ambiguity.
A paginated page (page 2+) is indexable with no canonical pointing to the first page.
Audit every canonical tagacross your site
A full audit checks every canonical for presence, correctness, and structural validity — the most comprehensive canonical health check available.