Google Explains That Canonicalization Is About Duplication Management

Google has another SEO mythbusting video, this one is on canonicalization and it is with Rachel Costello and Martin Splitt. Martin Splitt explained first you need to understand that canonicalization is about duplication management – Techduplication. But the whole video has tons of excellent nuggets on this complex SEO task.

Here are the timestamps in the video if you want to jump around. I added the answers if you do not want to watch it.

• Canonicalization is not a topical grouping (0:00)
• The most common canonicalization myths (1:29)
• Is canonicalization a directive or a signal for Google Search? It is a a signal, not a directive. (2:01)
• Should canonicalization be used as a redirect? No. (3:08)
• What are the actual factors for duplication and deduplication? There are a bunch of factors such as the content, navigation, etc and they are automated. (4:25)
• Site’s preference for the canonical URL vs user’s preference (7:33)
• Canonicalization vs unique content on pages with a canonical tag. It depends. (08:59)

This is a technical SEO dream talk.

Forum discussion at Twitter.