Canonicalization is when Google tries to combine any URLs together as one when it thinks there might be duplicate URLs. How Google does that can depend on a lot of different signals. John Mueller of Google listed some of the signals Google uses for canonicalization.
John posted on Twitter the following list of signals Google uses for canonicalization:
- Redirects
- Internal
- External links
- Sitemaps
- hreflang
- Canonicals tags
- cleaner URLs or shorter URLs
- and more...
Here is John's tweet:
Redirects are a signal for canonicalization, but they're not the only one. Internal, external links, sitemaps, hreflang, canonicals, cleaner URLs, etc -- all play a role. Make everything align, give it time to settle, and leave cookies & almond-milk for Googlebot.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) July 31, 2020
Anything missing?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
