What is Canonical issue in SEO ?

[Kaushal]

I want to know about canonical issue. Please provide me detail with some examples.

[justice]

Canonical is a tag which is placed in duplicate page issue like I have two pg A and B but by mistake A's content got repeat in B the I will insert canonical tag in page B. So that Google's crawler should move away by seeing canonical tag.

[AustinWebpages]

best example is the http://www.yourdomain.com vs yourdomain.com
both mean the same, but you want yourdomain.com to point to http://www.yourdomain.com

this also makes it so if you use google webmaster tools, you dont have to keep track of both of them.

[Richard]

Canonical issue is simply about duplicate content issue. Know more about it on this post: http://delasks.com/on-page-seo-technique...alization/

[Katrina]

Canonical issue is the problem when a website url say http://www.yoursite.com are same urls. So, this can create issue which optimizing websites for search engine.

[Kk]

When a single page can be downloaded from different urls it is called canonical issue.

[Ramesh Kumar]

Canonical issue is of duplicate pages, if by chance your site 2 page same content and different urls but you can't redirect it so their using canonical tag. Canonical tag using in head section on your site.

[The Gord Wu]

Wow I can't believe how many wrong answers there are here. Sorry, but half of them are about 301 redirects. <--- wow.

One guy said it best tho... Ramesh. It's about duplicate content, and here is a way to explain it.

You have two pages which are almost entirely the same content for whatever reason.

Page A - has content about cars /pagea
Page B - has the same content about cars, but has a different URL. /pageb

Page A is what you want listed in Google and where you want the traffic to really go to.

So you set a canoncial tag on PAGE B... (the canonical tag lists page A) to say that Page A is the place the visitors and the engines should go.

Page A will get priority, and you are telling the search engines pretty much this:
"Hey, I have two pages with the same content, but I am setting the canonical URL to page A okay? This way I won't have any duplicate content issues."

Search Engine: "Okay thanks! We will make sure and list page A and not page B, thanks for letting us know, you won't have a duplicate content issue now."

There's your answer. Hope that helps.

[vikalp]

if you have a same content at many web pages but the url is different then it is a canonical issue.
If you are using a same content then add a Canonical tag to page else google will penalize your site for spamming.

[Gina]

Mike Smith I agree with your answer. The answer which you have given is correct & you have given a very straight answer. Traffic to a site is divert only because of canonical issues which is not good for the websites.