rel canonical

Hello, I don't understand WHEN to write rel canonical.

When is it necessary?

I don't have duplicate content on the website.

I don't copied content on webiste.

I have a website in which for example: URL www.jobs/category/relegsaion/AXXSid

An URL like that one I have posted above, why would it need the rel canonical?

If you have two URLs in the site that are the same pages, you place rel=canonical in your duplicate page pointing to the original page. An example could be site.com/ and site.com/index.html

By doing this, you tell the crawlers your preferred version of the URL.

Think of it like the duplicate page within your site, and not something copied from another site.

Gogol said:

If you have two URLs in the site that are the same pages, you place rel=canonical in your duplicate page pointing to the original page. An example could be site.com/ and site.com/index.html

By doing this, you tell the crawlers your preferred version of the URL.

Think of it like the duplicate page within your site, and not something copied from another site.

Click to expand...

Thank you.

I am a noob.

Why does it happen? Why a page will have two URLa?

this happens to me from when you go http to https.

set23 said:

Thank you.

I am a noob.

Why does it happen? Why a page will have two URLa?

Click to expand...

It could be because of millions of reasons. As for an example, an e-commerce site might have a product with 5 color variations, each of which have their own page, but they have the same product description, features etc..
Not only do we use canonical for identical content, but also for content that are almost similar.. Google is your friend

When you have parameters like ? , it's good look carefuly to canonical tags.

Normally, the default canonical will be pointing back to the site's URL and nothing more. Of if you have both http and https and would like to enforce https and making sure that the search engine points to the https page only, then set the canonical to point to the https url only - there is a setting available for this. This way, both http and https will work, just that when being listed on the search engine, it will only be the https, as pointed out by the canonical link.
Otherwise, if you have many duplicate content or similar content that may be fighting for a position on the search engine, you can also use canonical to point the least attractive page, to the page that you think would be better listed on the search engine.