Hreflang Checker
Inspect alternate-language declarations and locale targets.
SEO
Free Canonical URL Checker
Inspect canonical URL declarations, duplicates, cross-host targets and whether the canonical matches the final fetched URL.
Your input is processed only as required by this tool.
Free Canonical URL Checker
A canonical link tells search engines which URL a page considers its preferred version. This checker follows the public URL, resolves relative canonical links against the final page URL and reports missing, duplicate, matching or cross-host declarations.
How to use it
- Enter the public page you want to inspect.
- Run the check and review the metadata extracted from the fetched HTML head.
- Compare the result with the page's intended search or social behavior before changing production markup.
How to read the result
One clear canonical is usually easiest to reason about. A canonical that differs from the fetched URL may be intentional for duplicates, parameters or alternate hosts, but it should point to the URL you genuinely want indexed.
Limitations
This tool reports HTML canonical declarations and final URL comparison. Search engines can consider other signals and may choose a different canonical, so the result is diagnostic rather than a guarantee of indexing behavior.
Frequently asked questions
Can a canonical URL be relative?
Yes. Relative canonical href values can be resolved against the page URL, although absolute canonical URLs are often easier to audit.
Does Google always obey rel=canonical?
No. Canonical is a strong signal, not an absolute directive, and search engines can select another canonical when signals conflict.