Is it ok for a canonical link to point to itself?

Question

I've got the canonical:

<link href="http://www.Site.com/Blog/how-to-know-when-this" rel="canonical" />

Is it ok if this is on the page it is pointing to?

Also I'm putting it on all these pages:

http://www.Site.com/Blog/how-to-know-when-this
http://www.Site.com/Blog/how-to-know-when-this/
http://www.Site.com/Blog.aspx?ID=1
http://www.Site.com/Blog/how-to-know-when-this/?q=

Is this correct useage?

possible duplicate of How to use rel='canonical' properly – Nick Jul 13 '11 at 15:55 — Nick, Jul 13 '11 at 15:55

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 07 '11 at 19:18

4

That's perfectly fine to do. It's just redundant and doesn't do any harm.

answered Mar 07 '11 at 19:18

John Conde

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I do it all the time because it makes programming easier when you have multiple pages with the same code and it helps me remember which page is the canonical page when I look back much later. – Ben Hoffman Mar 07 '11 at 19:20
@RandomBen yeah that's why I've done it, it's just easier than writing an exclusion rule as well – Tom Gullen Mar 07 '11 at 20:32
I wouldn't call it redundant at all. This is exactly the point of a canonical tag - to tell search engines the preferred URL of a page. If the current URL is the preferred URL then you need to specify that as well. – DisgruntledGoat Aug 22 '12 at 09:38

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 10 '11 at 17:02

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Update to this question: Google says it is OK to point the canonical tag to itself. Bing recommends against it.

answered Oct 10 '11 at 17:02

Anthony D. Nelson

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Can you link to the sources you used that explains why Bing recommends against it? – John Conde Oct 10 '11 at 17:21
This post summarizes it all! – BenMorel Nov 26 '14 at 12:05

Is it ok for a canonical link to point to itself?

2 Answers2