Canonical - how can you tell if page is appearing duplicate in Google?

[Prospector-Plastics]

Our home page file is www.ides.com/default.asp and appears in Google as www.ides.com.

Would it be a good thing for us to include the following tag in the head section of our website homepage?

[AlanMosley]

i would 301 default.asp to "/"

i would also make sure that I sam not using default.asp in any of my internal links.

Its not really the best use of a canonical.

A canonical will not redirect the user, so he still sees the default.asp, can still copy the default.asp and create link pointing to the default.asp that will leak a bit of juice when it is meged by the canonical.

You lose a little link juice when it is 301ed also, but at least then you are unlikly to get any more links copied with the default.asp

[RobMay]

Note: You should make sure all the canonical versions of this render properly as well. This way - all links and 'juice' or value are passed the the domain name you specify.

www.mysite.com

mysite.com

mysite.com/default.aspx

www.mysite.com/defaults.aspx

Checking Google webmaster tools will also help see any errors when handling duplicate content issues (for homepage or entire site). as this was also a new feature in recent months added by Google.

Cheers!