Require Canonical Link

ID

html.link_rel_canonical

Severity

info

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Best Practice

Language

Html

Tags

best_practice

Description

Flags a document whose <head> carries no <link rel="canonical">.

Rationale

When the same content is reachable through several URLs (query parameters, tracking suffixes, trailing slashes), a canonical link tells search engines which URL is authoritative so ranking signals are consolidated rather than split. A page with no canonical risks duplicate-content dilution.

<head>                                                  <!-- FLAW — no canonical -->
  <title>Hi</title>
</head>

<head>                                                  <!-- OK — canonical present -->
  <link rel="canonical" href="https://x.com/p">
</head>

Remediation

Add <link rel="canonical" href="…​"> inside <head> pointing at the authoritative URL for the page.

References