Canonical tags on small sites: when they help and when they hide indexing bugs
Most small sites I audit as a freelancer have canonical tags. Very few have correct canonical tags. And the bad ones rarely throw an error — they just quietly tell Google "don't index this page," and you find out three months later when a page you care about shows up in Search Console as "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" or "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user." This…
Canonical tags play a crucial role in small websites, but their effectiveness depends on their proper implementation. While they offer a practical solution for consolidating similar pages, they can also inadvertently hide indexing bugs if misused. The key is to strike a balance between leveraging their benefits and addressing underlying issues that may lead to SEO problems.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
