According to Search Engine Roundtable, Google has updated its official canonical help document to recommend using a self-referential canonical tag on canonical pages. The update has been made in Google's original canonical documentation. While this has been Google's long-standing recommendation, it is now officially included in the help document.
The updated document includes 2 new recommendations:
- Google now advises website owners to place a rel="canonical" tag on the preferred page itself, a practice known as using a self-referential canonical.
- The company also recommends that every canonical page should include a rel="canonical" tag pointing back to its own URL.
A self-referential canonical tag means a page points to itself as the canonical version. In the page's source code, it appears as a standard rel="canonical" tag that references the same URL.
Despite this new addition the guidance itself has been around for quite some time. In 2011, John Mueller, speaking for Google explained, using self-canonicalization helps to keep the website structure clean and simplifies finding the preferred version for web robots crawling the site, which can save time. Except self and back canonicalizing the site, no further modifications have been carried out to the Google's canonical help document. to get updated , get in touch with Vybepop Media.
