Canonical URLs
The preferred URL when duplicates exist. AI crawlers also waste budget on copies and may cite the ugly one.
UTM copies, AMP, print views, and HTTP/HTTPS splits fragment citations.
Self-referencing canonicals on the right host. Redirect the rest.
Examples
- Perplexity cites example.com/index.php?id=12 while you wanted /blog/name. Canonicals plus redirects.
Related terms
Google’s old fast-pages format. It is not an AI ranking booster. Core Web Vitals and real HTML matter more now.
How much a bot is willing to fetch. AI bots can be greedier or pickier than Googlebot. Faceted URLs still waste everyone’s time.
Discover, fetch, store. Google does it. AI labs do it with other bots and rules. You need both if you want both channels.
FAQ
Do models honor rel=canonical? +
Not reliably. Redirects and internal links that only point at the canonical help more.
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