Canonical tag checker

Does your canonical point to the right place?

Type an address. We read the page's canonical tag and tell you whether it exists and whether it points to another domain. Free, no signup, nothing is stored.

One page per check. We fetch it the way a crawler does, without a browser, and keep nothing.

What it checks

The canonical tag (the rel="canonical" link in the page's head) tells Google which address is the real one when a page can be reached at several. The tool checks whether the tag exists and whether it points to another domain.

Why it matters

The most damaging mistake is a canonical that points to a staging site or an old domain; Google may then move the page's signals to the wrong address. A canonical is a hint, not an order, but a wrong hint can quietly cost rankings.

How to fix it

  1. Find the rel="canonical" line in the page source and check that it points to your live domain.
  2. If your SEO plugin writes the canonical, check the plugin's and the site's address settings.
  3. On sites moved from staging, search the database for the old domain and replace it.
Questions

What people ask next.

Should every page have a canonical?

It is not required but it is recommended, especially on sites that produce parameterised URLs (?utm=, ?sort=). The tool shows a missing canonical as something to review, not as a failure.

My canonical points to another page on the same site. Is that wrong?

It can be deliberate (product variants, for example). The tool only flags a canonical that points to another domain.

Not once. Every day.

This check is today's snapshot. Crawlens runs the same checks on your clients' sites on a schedule and tells you, with the evidence, when something breaks.

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