What is rel=canonical and Why should I use it?

[Tommy]

Hi everyone,

What is rel=canonical and Why should we use it?
Please share explanations and reasons why we should apply it for our websites.

Any comments would be appreciated!
Thanks

 

[Alex_smith]

rel=canonical tag is used to say the search engine that has only one url, no other duplicate urls exist for this page.

 

[Mark Steve]

Canonical is a value written in ‘rel’ field of the link tag. If search engines come across a webpage with canonical tag in it, they understand that it is the duplicate version. A URL is provided in the link tag which points to original version of the content.

 

[Alex Thompson]

Canonical is a value written in ‘rel’ field of the link tag. If search engines come across a webpage with canonical tag in it, they understand that it is the duplicate version. A URL is provided in the link tag which points to original version of the content.