An HTML link element that tells search engines which URL is the authoritative version when near-duplicate content exists. Prevents duplicate indexing and consolidates ranking signals.
Without canonical tags, link equity gets split across duplicate pages (?utm_source=... variants, http vs https, www vs non-www). Set a self-referencing canonical on every page; for syndicated content, point the canonical at the original source.
An e-commerce site has product pages accessible at both /product/blue-widget and /product/blue-widget?color=blue. Without canonicals, Google and AI crawlers index both — splitting authority. With a canonical pointing both to /product/blue-widget, all ranking signals consolidate on the preferred URL.
VibecodeAEO scans your site for all AEO factors weekly and tells you exactly what to fix.