Canonicals – What the hell are they?

In a nutshell a canonical is used to tell Google where you got the content from originally.

Imagine you had to do an essay, and when you handed that long 2000 word essay in – most of the work was Jeff’s. The tutor would mark you down nearly 100% and tell you off. this is the same as Google telling you off. It sees your web page and also an identical one somewhere else, be it on your own site or another website and so instead of arguing who was the real author it will ignore both pages and you will not get any points for it. So you might have not written it anyway.
Cheating does not pay!

BUT

if you tell Google that you got if from another website originally, then Google says no problem, thanks for being honest and you can have a few points, but not lots! If you use the canonical tag this will inform Google. This page does not have a canonical URL attached to it as this is an original piece of work, so if you see this on any other website other than www.codehaven.co.uk it should have a canonical tag in the code somewhere!