Google Does Major Refresh Of The Canonicalization Help Documentation

Feb 3, 2023 - 7:31 am 1 by

Google Cluster Grapes

Google has updated its search help documentation around canonicalization this morning. The Google Search Relations team split in three distinct sections and updated a lot of the content to provide clearer details around how Google Search and canonicalization works.

The three sections include:

All of this use to be on a single help page, which you can review on the Wayback Machine over here to compare.

With this, Gary Illyes from Google dropped another LinkedIn tip on the topic of canonicalization, he wrote:

Friday ramble: you can stack canonicalization signals to strengthen that hint.

You have a rel=canonical pointing from A to B, but A is HTTPS, it's in your hreflang clusters, all your links are pointing to A, and A is included in your sitemaps instead of B. Which one should search engines pick as canonical, A or B?

If you just change the URLs from A to B in your sitemaps and hreflang clusters, combined with that rel=canonical it might already be enough to tip over canonicalization to B. Change the links also, and you have an even greater chance to convince search engines about your canonical preference.

Recently, Gary also mentioned to use absoluate URLs for rel-canonical.

So check out these new docs and learn a bit more on canonicalization and Google Search.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.

 

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: June 11, 2025

Jun 11, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google On Unrelated Content As A Search Ranking Issue

Jun 11, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Search Removal-Based Demotion Systems Changes Threshold

Jun 11, 2025 - 7:45 am
Google

ChatGPT Mostly Source Wikipedia; Google AI Overviews Mostly Source Reddit

Jun 11, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Ads

Microsoft Advertising New Custom Report Builder & More

Jun 11, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google News

Google Looks To Reduce Search & Ad Units With Buyout Program

Jun 11, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Is This The Microsoft Bing ChatGPT Search Interface?