Editing Canonicalization (section)

===Search engines and SEO===
In web search and [[search engine optimization]] (SEO), [[URL canonicalization]] deals with web content that has more than one possible URL. Having multiple URLs for the same web content can cause problems for search engines - specifically in determining which URL should be shown in search results.<ref name=cutts>{{cite web|last=Cutts|first=Matt|title=SEO advice: url canonicalization|url=http://www.mattcutts.com//blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/|work=Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO|accessdate=3 September 2013|date=January 4, 2006}}</ref> Most search engines support the [[Canonical link element]] as a hint to which URL should be treated as the true version. As indicated by John Mueller of Google,  having other directives in a page, like the [[Noindex|robots noindex]] element can give search engines conflicting signals about how to handle canonicalization <ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.thegooglecache.com/canonicalized-url-is-noindex-nofollow.html|title=Canonicalized URL is noindex, nofollow|language=en-US|access-date=2020-04-20}}</ref>

Example:
* <code>http://wikipedia.com{{cbignore}}</code>
* <code>http://www.wikipedia.com{{cbignore}}</code>
* <code>http://www.wikipedia.com/{{cbignore}}</code>
* <code>http://www.wikipedia.com/?source=asdf{{cbignore}}</code>

All of these URLs point to the homepage of Wikipedia, but a search engine will only consider one of them to be the canonical form of the URL.