Rel Canonical help

[TeamacPaints]

Is it possible to confirm this to me please?

My understanding of the rel canonical tag was to tell google of duplicate content? so for instance

product 1
www.ourdomain.co.uk/products/category/subcategory/theproduct1

Product 1a
www.ourdomain.co.uk/products/category/subcategory/theproduct1a same content just a different colour would be rel canonical'd to Product 1 as thats the main product, is my understanding correct?

Now here is what I have discovered.

www.ourdomain.co.uk/products/category/subcategory/theproduct1 has a rel canonical tag that reverts back to

www.ourdomain.co.uk/products/ which isn't optimized as such its just a generic catalog page.

This is inccorect and google will dismiss the actial product and revert to the generic catalog page?

any help would be great.

[TeamacPaints]

Thank you, and this rel canonical url is just a re-divert to the home page. web designers have messed up here. thank you for clarification on my thoughts

[PeaSoupDigital]

Hello,

You're correct. www.ourdomain.co.uk/products/category/subcategory/theproduct1 shouldn't have a rel=canonical pointing to /products. You can either remove the tag altogether or change the tag to point to itself:

You currently have a tag pointing towards /products, which means it's likely Google will disregard the page you want to rank. Sometimes, if Google thinks you've made an error, they'll ignore the rel=canonical. But it's better to be safe than sorry, so remove/amend it.

Cheers,

Lewis