Canonical tag
A tag that tells search engines which URL is the authoritative version of a page that can be reached several ways.
Written as a link element in the head. It exists because the same content routinely lives at multiple addresses: with and without parameters, with and without a trailing slash, printed and paginated versions.
Without one, a search engine picks for itself, and it may pick the version you did not want, splitting the signals a single page should have accumulated.
It is a hint, not an instruction. Google will override a canonical it disagrees with, which is usually a sign the two pages are not as similar as the tag claims.
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