Free tool
Which address does your page tell Google to credit?
Enter a page address and we read its canonical tag, then say whether it points at itself or somewhere else.
A canonical tag is how a page says which address is the real one when the same content can be reached several ways, which is almost every online shop with filters, sorting or tracking parameters. Pointed at itself it is doing its job quietly. Pointed at the wrong page by accident, it hands your rankings to something else.
Free, no account. We read the canonical tag in the page and compare it with the address.
Questions people ask
- What is a canonical tag?
- A line in a page's head that names the address you want search engines to treat as the original. When several addresses show the same content, it tells Google which one to keep and which to fold into it.
- How do I check the canonical URL of a page?
- Enter the page address above. We fetch the page and read the canonical link from its head, then compare it with the address that actually answered, so you can see at a glance whether the page points at itself.
- Should a page be canonical to itself?
- Usually yes. A self-referencing canonical is the normal, safe state for any page you want indexed on its own. A canonical pointing elsewhere is correct only when the page really is a duplicate of that other one.
- What happens if the canonical tag is wrong?
- Search engines take it as a strong hint and may drop the page in favour of the address it names. A site-wide canonical pointing at the homepage, which happens when a template is misconfigured, can remove every other page from search results.
- Does a canonical tag stop a page being indexed?
- No. It consolidates duplicates. To keep a page out of search entirely you need a noindex instruction, either in a robots meta tag or in the x-robots-tag header, and this checker reports the robots meta tag it finds alongside the canonical.
Other free tools
- HTTP header checkerSee what your server sends back, including any x-robots-tag.
- SERP snippet previewSee how your title and description will look in Google.