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Canonical Tag Generator

A clean canonical URL, with hreflang alternates. Free, and runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded, stored or sent to a server.

About Canonical Tag Generator

One page is usually reachable at several addresses: with and without tracking parameters, with and without a trailing slash, over http and https, with the query in a different order. A canonical tag names the one address that counts, so the ranking signals from all of them land on the same page.

This cleans the address before writing the tag: campaign parameters removed, host lowercased, fragment dropped, remaining query sorted, and http rewritten to https. Each change is listed, because a canonical that silently differs from the page it sits on is worse than none at all.

Alternates can be given a language at a time. If you declare them, every page in the group has to point back — hreflang is only honoured when the references are reciprocal — and an x-default is added for anyone whose language you have not covered.

The graded block scores the address you gave it rather than the one written out: a canonical over http is a fault, leftover query parameters are a decision to make, and the things the tool fixed for you are notes that cost nothing.

Where it helps

  • Removes the tracking parameters that split one page into hundreds of near-duplicates.
  • Says what it changed and why, rather than quietly rewriting the address.
  • Writes hreflang alternates with the x-default that is usually forgotten.
  • Local, and instant, which makes it usable as a habit rather than an audit step.

Limits

  • A canonical is a hint, not an instruction: a search engine may ignore one that contradicts what it sees.
  • It cannot tell whether the address redirects — a canonical pointing at a redirect is a common and invisible fault.
  • Whether a trailing slash belongs is a decision about your server, not one this can make for you.
  • Cross-domain canonicals work but are riskier: the wrong one hands your ranking to someone else's page.

Frequently asked questions

Should a page canonicalise to itself?

Yes, in almost every case. A self-referencing canonical is what settles the parameter and protocol variants of the same page.

Which parameters should I keep?

Only those that change what is on the page — a page number, a category filter that produces different content. Campaign and session parameters never belong.

Does a canonical stop a page being crawled?

No. It says which address to index. To stop crawling use robots.txt, and to stop indexing use a noindex tag.

What is x-default for?

It names the page to show a visitor whose language matches none of your alternates. Without it, those visitors get whichever page the engine guesses.

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