Canonical Tag Checker
Check placement & target of <link rel="canonical">. We fetch the URL once (or follow redirects) and report issues.
Results
Enter a URL to validate its canonical tag. We’ll also show the redirect chain and target indexability.
Why canonical tags matter
- Help search engines consolidate duplicate / near-duplicate URLs into a single representative URL.
- Reduce dilution from parameters, sort orders, and alternate paths so rankings and signals are more stable.
- Work best when consistent with redirects, internal links, hreflang, and sitemaps (not sending mixed signals).
FAQs
Google supports relative URLs, but recommends absolute canonicals to avoid ambiguity and
migration edge cases.
In the
<head> only. Canonicals in <body> are ignored. Place it early
in the head so it’s easy for crawlers to see.
No - fragments aren’t supported in canonicals. Use a fragment-less URL such as
https://example.com/product (without #reviews).
It’s usually a good practice to include a self-referencing canonical on the canonical version of the page
to make your preference explicit.
A live, indexable 200 page (not 3xx/4xx/5xx; not
noindex). Point canonicals
directly to the final 200 URL you want indexed.
Usage note: This checker makes a live request to the URL you enter using
HotaCanonicalChecker/1.0 (+https://www.hota.digital). We don’t store content or URLs.
Results reflect the server response at request time and may differ from rendered output.