Google: We Process rel=canonicals On Initial Fetch, Not Rendered Version

May 11, 2018 - 7:31 am 4 by

Googlebot

Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that GoogleBot currently will process the rel=canonical attribute on the initial fetch, not on the rendered version of the HTML. Pedro Dias picked this up while watching the JavaScript session at I/O.

He said "I don’t know if everyone’s seen this but there’s a very important point here regarding canonicals. And it’s the fact Google only checks canonicals on the raw HTML, not the rendered one." Why is this important, he said you should "make sure your server doesn’t output canonical placeholders that are replaced on render."

John Mueller confirmed this by saying "We (currently) only process the rel=canonical on the initially fetched, non-rendered version."

Eric Wu noted a site doing it wrong:

So make sure to keep this in mind when implementing canonical tags.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: February 7, 2025

Feb 7, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Volatility, Google Ads Quality Update, Google AI Overviews Updates & Other Search Engines

Feb 7, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Says People Know When Author Bios Are For SEO Purposes

Feb 7, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Keyword Planner New Auto-Organize Keywords To Ad Groups

Feb 7, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Reinstatements Now Include Case & 5 Upload Documents

Feb 7, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Google Local Reviews Decreasing Over Past 24 Hours

Feb 7, 2025 - 7:25 am
Previous Story: WordStream Sells To Gannett For $150 Million