18.3% of Canonical Tags on Top Website Homepages Point Google to a Different URL

    18.3% of the canonical tags on the homepages of the 500,000 most visited websites point Google to a different URL, telling it that another page is the main version of the homepage. 7.1% point to a different website altogether, and 46.7% of these homepages have no canonical tag at all.

    Canonicals pointing elsewhere by site popularity
    Top 10,000 sites
    17.3%
    Ranked 10,000 to 500,000
    18.3%
    All 500,000 most visited sites
    18.3%

    Source: Suff Digital analysis of 384,602 homepages of the 500,000 most visited websites · HTTP Archive, September 2026

    Homepages with a canonical tag by site popularity
    Top 10,000 sites
    66.7%
    Ranked 10,000 to 500,000
    53%
    All 500,000 most visited sites
    53.3%

    Source: Suff Digital analysis of 384,602 homepages of the 500,000 most visited websites · HTTP Archive, September 2026

    Source: 18.3% of Canonical Tags on Top Website Homepages Point Google to a Different URL - Suff Digital