Do you set the title attribute of the canonical link tag to the page title?

Question

A <link ...> tag supports the title="..." attribute.

When used with rel="canonical", what do you set the title attribute to? Would that be a hard coded title such as:

title="Canonical URL"

Or do you set it to the page title, such as:

title="Home Page"

It seems to me that the page title makes more sense. Is there documentation about that attribute along rel="canonical"?

SeaMonkey displays it if available, but I was wondering whether other systems (especially in regard to SEO) would do too. — Alexis Wilke, Jun 6, 2017 at 21:29

Stephen Ostermiller · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-06 12:32:01Z

3

You don't need to use the title attribute. It doesn't add any functionality.

This is what your canonical tag should look like. Make sure you use the FULL url including the correct http or https protocol. Not relative urls.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://blog.example.com/dresses/green-dresses-are-awesome" />

Stephen Ostermiller♦

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answered Jun 6, 2017 at 9:55

Kristian Svensson

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Actually, SeaMonkey shows the title in its extended navigation toolbar under the "More » canonical » <title here>" menu. So having it is nice for people who have SeaMonkey and use that link (which I suppose is much less than 1% of the world...) But that means I can put whatever I want, it should not affect anything else.
– Alexis Wilke
Jun 6, 2017 at 20:40

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