How to check a canonical tag
To check a canonical tag, paste a page's full HTML or just the head markup. The Canonical Tag Checker scans for rel=canonical link elements, extracts the URL value, and reports what it finds. If no canonical is present, multiple canonicals are declared, or the value is relative or otherwise suspicious, the tool flags it as a practical warning.
Canonical mistakes are easy to miss and costly for SEO, because they tell search engines which version of a page to index. Catching a missing or conflicting canonical from the markup — before it reaches production — avoids duplicate-content and indexing problems. The check is paste-first and runs locally in your browser.
- Paste full HTML or just the head section
- Extract the rel=canonical URL value
- See warnings for missing, multiple, relative, or odd values
- Copy a summary or JSON output
Why it belongs next to your meta QA
Canonical checks usually happen alongside title, meta description, and hreflang QA during on-page reviews. The Canonical Tag Checker keeps that one job focused and fast so it slots cleanly into an existing SEO workflow.
Because it works from pasted markup rather than crawling a live URL, you can validate canonicals on staging pages, drafts, or templated output that is not yet publicly reachable.