Canonical link rel tag pointing to the same page

Question

Im implementing the canonical tag in my page to avoid be penalized with duplicate content flag by search engines. My doubt are the following:

If i have a page COPY with the canonical tag pointing to ORIGINAL, and in this ORIGINAL page i have the canonical tag pointing to ORIGINAL again, what are the consecuences? The think is that for me is more easy to generate the tag in all pages, and not only in the copies.
Can i put the <link rel="canonical" href="ORIGINAL" /> in anyplace, or should be in the <head> tag.

John Conde · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-01 12:06:59Z

up vote 4 down vote accepted

You can have a <link rel="canonical"> on the original page. There's no harm in doing so. It's just redundant but that's not a problem.

<link rel="canonical"> belongs in the <head> section only. If it is outside of the <head> it is invalid HTML and may not be honored.

edited Sep 1 '11 at 12:06

answered Aug 31 '11 at 11:59

John Conde♦
59.4k568142

	Do you mean "invalid HTML"? – Peter Taylor Sep 1 '11 at 8:09
	Yes, corrected my answer – John Conde♦ Sep 1 '11 at 12:06

Nishi · Answer 2 · 2011-09-19 09:31:36Z

up vote 0 down vote

If you know all things regarding how to add canonical rel in web page please visit : http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394

answered Sep 19 '11 at 9:31

Nishi
605

migrated from stackoverflow.com Aug 31 '11 at 14:59