Glossary — Implementation
Canonical URL is a tag that explicitly declares "this is the canonical URL" when the same content is delivered under multiple URLs.
For example, suppose the same product page is accessible through several URLs:
https://example.com/products/abc (canonical version)https://example.com/products/abc?ref=twitter (for social inflow)https://example.com/products/abc?utm_source=email (for email inflow)https://example.com/products/abc/ (with trailing slash)These are all "the same page," but to AI or Google they look like "different pages." As a result, citations and backlink credit get split into four.
So you write inside <head>:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/products/abc">
This tells the AI "all of these are versions of the canonical URL /products/abc." Credit consolidates into one, and the AI citation rate goes up.
Write it in the <head> of every major page. It is especially important on pages where dynamic URL parameters (?ref=...) are expected.
<head>
<link rel="canonical" href="canonical URL">
...
</head>