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Joomla! 3 Canonical - How to fix?
Written by Grigor Mihov   
Saturday, 02 November 2013 14:17
Joomla! 3 introduced the canonical links in the core. Unfortunately, the implementation is so broken, that overall it is better to remove the canonical link, rather to use how Joomla! is doing it. They way Joomla! are doing it is basically a SEO killer (in negative aspect).

The idea of the canonical link is if your site has several URLs that actually display the same content (which is true in Joomla!, because of its routing), all the duplicated pages to have a canonical link to a single one. That way duplicated content is avoid.

However, the way it was implemented in Joomla!, the canonical URL is always the current URL. Which means it is broken. In fact it is very broken and we made a small plugin to fix most of the things and remove the canonical from where we can't fix it. It is better to not have canonical, rather to have a wrong one.

The plugin fixes the canonical links in the following views:
  • Homepage
  • Blog view
  • Article view
It also has a feature that fixes the multiple URLs of a tag page. However we don't use canonical there, but a redirect. In order this to work, you must have at least one menu item that links to a tag. You can download the plugin for free from here.