✅ Correct implementation

This page's canonical points to https://sallymills.com/canonicals/ — not to itself. That's intentional. It demonstrates cross-page consolidation: multiple pages declaring a single shared canonical.

What this demonstrates

This page correctly declares its canonical as the section hub at /canonicals/. It's an example of cross-page canonical consolidation — the pattern to use when you want multiple URLs to signal that one preferred version should accumulate ranking signals.

Why it matters

When you have duplicate or near-duplicate content on different URLs — filtered pages, tracking-parameter variants, paginated sections, print versions — pointing all canonicals to the authoritative version consolidates ranking signals correctly. Google receives a clear, consistent signal about which URL to index and rank.

Without this, Google has to decide on its own which version to treat as canonical. It often gets it right, but it doesn't always — and when it doesn't, link equity and content signals stay split across multiple URLs.

The code

This is the canonical tag on this page. It points to the section hub, not back to itself.

<!-- Cross-page consolidation: points to the hub, not self --> <link rel="canonical" href="https://sallymills.com/canonicals/"> <!-- Compare: self-referencing canonical (also correct, for the hub itself) --> <link rel="canonical" href="https://sallymills.com/canonicals/correct-canonical/">

What Google does

  1. Googlebot crawls this page and reads the canonical pointing to /canonicals/.
  2. Google follows the canonical to /canonicals/ and confirms it exists and is crawlable.
  3. Google treats /canonicals/ as the preferred version for this content.
  4. Ranking signals — links, content relevance, engagement — are consolidated to the hub URL.
  5. This page may still be crawled, but /canonicals/ is what Google will index and rank.

How to detect it

  • view-source Ctrl+U (Windows) / Cmd+U (Mac) → search for canonical → the href will show https://sallymills.com/canonicals/, not the current page's URL. A non-self-referencing canonical is the tell.
  • curl Open Command Prompt (Windows) or Terminal (Mac) and run: curl -L https://sallymills.com/canonicals/correct-canonical/ | grep canonical — The canonical tag in the response will point to /canonicals/. (Windows: replace | grep canonical with | findstr canonical.)
  • Google Search Console This page may appear in Coverage under "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" — confirming Google has accepted the canonical and is indexing the hub instead.
  • Screaming Frog Canonicals tab → "Canonical URL" column shows https://sallymills.com/canonicals/. The "Canonical Type" column will show "Non-Self Referencing" — distinguishing it from a standard self-referencing canonical.

When to use this pattern

Use cross-page canonicals when you have multiple URLs serving the same or very similar content and you want to tell Google which one to treat as the single source of truth. Common use cases:

  • Filtered or sorted product listing pages (/shoes/?sort=price → /shoes/)
  • Tracking parameter variants (/page/?utm_source=email → /page/)
  • Print versions of pages (/article/print/ → /article/)
  • Paginated series where page 1 is the canonical (/blog/page/2/ → /blog/)
  • Near-duplicate content across different URL structures after a migration

The destination canonical must be a real, crawlable, non-redirected URL. And it should have a self-referencing canonical on that page — completing the signal.

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