Canonical URL Checker - Validate rel=canonical for SEO

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Audit canonical tags on any page or site to prevent duplicate-content issues and canonicalization mistakes.

This Actor fetches each page and checks:

• Missing <link rel="canonical">
• Multiple canonical tags
• Invalid or relative canonical URLs
• Canonical that differs from the final loaded URL (after redirects)
• Optional cross-domain canonical warnings

Input

• Start URLs (startUrls) – Pages to check.
• Max pages (maxPages) – Crawl limit.
• Follow internal links (followLinks) – Turn on for site-wide audits.
• Max depth (maxDepth) – Depth when following links.
• Stay on same domain (sameDomainOnly) – Avoid leaving the site.
• Request timeout (timeoutSecs) – Per-page processing timeout.
• Normalize trailing slash (normalizeTrailingSlash) – Treat /page and /page/ as the same for comparisons.
• Allow cross-domain canonical (allowCrossDomainCanonical) – If disabled, cross-domain canonicals are flagged.
• Proxy (proxyConfiguration) – Optional Apify Proxy.

Output

Dataset (per page)

Each dataset item includes:

• url, loadedUrl, statusCode, title
• canonicalCount, canonicalUrl, isSelfCanonical, redirected
• warnings[], errors[]

Key-value store

• SUMMARY – run totals
• REPORT – compact per-page report

Example API usage

Run from API / CLI with an input like:

{
"startUrls":[{"url":"https://example.com"}],
"maxPages":10,
"followLinks":false
}

Quick start

Store page: https://apify.com/scrappy_garden/canonical-url-checker

Paste this into Input and click Run:

{
"startUrls":[
{
"url":"https://example.com/"
}
],
"proxyConfiguration":{
"useApifyProxy":false
}
}

Outputs (what you get)

• Dataset: Dataset items typically include fields like: url, loadedUrl, statusCode, title, canonicalCount, canonicalUrl, isSelfCanonical, redirected, warnings, errors.
• Key-value store: REPORT, SUMMARY

Tips (trust + predictable results)

• Start with 1–3 URLs to validate behavior, then scale up.
• If a target blocks requests, enable Proxy and/or slow down concurrency in Input.
• Use the SUMMARY / REPORT keys (when present) for automation pipelines and monitoring.

Related actors

• broken-link-checker (https://apify.com/scrappy_garden/broken-link-checker)
• meta-tag-analyzer (https://apify.com/scrappy_garden/meta-tag-analyzer)
• security-headers-checker (https://apify.com/scrappy_garden/security-headers-checker)

Search keywords

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