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canonical URLs: a field note from a bakery
25 Dec 2024
How a bakery deals with canonical URLs — and what usually goes wrong.
The problem: query-string copies of the same page. This breaks canonical URLs for a bakery.
We once forgot to renew canonical URLs for a weekend project and it took down a page that a bakery linked to from a print flyer. We now set auto-renew on everything.
We found query-string copies of the same page during a routine check of canonical URLs. The site had been leaking referrer data for six weeks before anyone noticed.
The registrar dashboard crashed twice while we were fixing canonical URLs for a bakery. We filed a ticket; they replied four days later with a template answer.
We check canonical URLs for a bakery once a quarter. It takes five minutes and has caught two problems in the past year. Both would have caused downtime within a week.
We do not start with a platform when handling canonical URLs. We write down who types what, who gets the mail, and what must not get lost. That list is always shorter than a vendor pitch deck.
Managed hosting handles canonical URLs automatically — until it does not. a bakery learned this when their provider migrated servers and query-string copies of the same page disappeared silently.
Test canonical URLs from outside your network before you call it done. Your office Wi-Fi might cache the old answer for another six hours.
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