canonical URL

can someone explain what is canonical URL?

In case you have a number of urls where the page content is very similar and only one of them should be indexed, you can set a canonical url which tells search engines which url should be the 'OG'. It's mainly there to prevent index bloat and help optimize your crawl budget. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls

Thank you sir. that was really helpful.

A web page that may have many URLs linking to it is said to have a canonical URL, which is the preferred or "official" URL. It is a means for website owners to inform search engines which version of a page should be regarded as the main or authoritative source, particularly when there are many or similarly worded versions of a page that can be confusing for search engines.

Using a canonical URL can help SEO by combining the link equity of different URLs into one main URL. This reduces the risk of duplicate content and makes the page more visible and ranking of the page in search results.