Canonical issues

 What is Canonical issues ?

Canonical issues most commonly occur when a website has more than one URL that displays similar or identical content.  

A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google thinks is most representative from a set of duplicate pages on your site. For example, if you have URLs for the same page (for example: example.com? dress=1234 and example.com/dresses/1234), Google chooses one as canonical.

How to fix canonical issue/URL Canonicalization 

There are two main ways to fix canonical issues on a website: by implementing 301 redirects, and/or by adding canonical tags to your site's pages to tell Google which of several similar pages is preferred. The right option depends on the canonical issue you're trying to resolve.

1. Open the C-panel or Hosting Provider

2. add .htaccess file 

http://doubleswadkitchens.com/

http://doubleswadkitchens.com/index.html

http://www.doubleswadkitchens.com/

http://www.doubleswadkitchens.com/index.html

.htaccess File

301 Redirection - Permanent redirection

302 Redirection - Temporarily redirection 

1. Redirect "non www to www"

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

2. Redirect Index.html to home or main url

RewriteRule ^index\.(html?|php)$ / [L,R=301,NC]

Example : In order to pass this test you must consider using a 301 re-write rule in your .htaccess file so that both addresses (http://example.com and http://www.example.com) resolve to the same URL.

- If you want to redirect http://www.example.com to http://example.com, 

you can use this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$

RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/example\.com\/" [R=301,L]

- If you want to redirect http://example.com to http://www.example.com, 

you can use this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]*