Google Search Console Now Shows Google-Selected Canonical URLs by @MattGSouthern
Google Search Console will now show site owners which URL has been selected as the canonical version.
This information can be found by entering a page’s address in the URL Inspection tool.
Google just rolled the update out this morning:
Spring cleaning continues: now you get to see in webmasters tools the Google selected canonical! https://t.co/f31p36Zq9c
— Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) March 26, 2019
When running a URL through the inspection tool, Google will show what it has selected as the canonical for that specific page.
This is important information for site owners to be aware of because Google will sometimes ignore rel=canonical markup.
So the URL that’s actually showing up in search results may be different from what you intended.
If you believe Google has not selected the best canonical URL for a particular page, there are ways you can suggest a different one. Please see our article on how to deal with similar content.
Search Console’s URL inspection tool is now the most comprehensive solution for discovering what Google has selected as the canonical URL.
Google notes that using the ‘site:’ or ‘inurl:’ commands are not efficient ways of discovering the Google-selected canonical.
“Please be aware that if you search using the site: or inurl: commands, you will be shown the domain you specified in those, even if these aren’t the Google-selected canonical. This happens because we’re fulfilling the exact request entered.”
With this update, you can find out the Google-selected canonical for any URL, not just those for the properties you manage in Search Console.
Google has decided to retire the ‘info:’ command, which was an alternative (and underused) way of discovering canonicals.
