canonical link to the home page

Question

A friend and I are debating the use of the canonical tag. I say if I'm on

http://www.example.com/page.html

but my site has moved to

http://www.BetterExample.com

my canonical tag needs to be

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.BetterExample.com/page.html" />

while my friend says it's OK if it's

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.BetterExample.com/" />

I'd like not only a "who's right" but ideally a link to an article that discusses my friend's example.

Answer 1

Canonical URLs are per page, not per website. So if you are using a canonical URL it must point to the page it is a duplicate of, not the website that page resides on.

And actually you both are wrong. You don't use canonical URLs for this. You are supposed to use a 301 redirect to indicate that a page has moved to a new URL. Canonical URLs are to indicate that a page is a duplicate, or alternative URL, for accessing certain content. 301 redirects tell the search engines, and users, that the page has moved and to refer to the new URL from on. It also tells the search engines to associate all links to the old URL to the new URL which is much better for SEO.

Answer 2

If you're making the move regardless you would remove the extra /page.html. I hate to say it but your friend is right, if only from a user experience perspective. You still have to 301.. unless there is no rank to transfer. If that's the case, you're just changing domains, so any content you specify is in essence the canonical version of the content you've always provided. This is a hypothetical real world example.