Which Version Url to Use for Canonical Tags and in General for Homepage.
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I want to put canonical tags on the homepage of a site.
cant figure out the version of URL of the homepage should be with a / at the end or without the / ( www.example.com of www.example.com/ )
if I put into the google the URL with / I get the URL without the / in my browser, and it isn't showing as a redirect in my moz extension or other tools. But when I copy the URL from browser and paste elsewhere it pastes with a /
I have two questions
1 - in general how does it work with URLs of homepages - I see this happening with lots of sites?
2 - which URL should I set as the canonical version of my homepage?
Thanks so much
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You are welcome!
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Thanks, Joe
that was really helpful.
I appreciate the sources that you sent.
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Hi Ruchy,
Honestly, it shouldn't make a difference, Google looks at homepage URLs with and without the trailing slash as equivalent. For my clients, I typically include the slash (" / ") at the end of the homepage canonical tag, but again, this shouldn't matter.
I actually commented on a similar post that discusses how search engines view these two different variations of the homepage, you can see that here.
Google looks at root domain URLs with and without trailing slashes as equivalent, see the resources below.
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"Should we always add the final / or avoid it? Does it make a difference?" Answer: "There's no difference between them. (As opposed to not putting a slash on links into a directory, for example.)" (source)
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"Rest assured that for your root URL specifically, http://example.com is equivalent to http://example.com/ and can’t be redirected even if you’re Chuck Norris." (Source - Google Webmasters Blog)
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