How to add or replace canonical URL to refere to another domain?

[8parth]

The plugin adds canonical-url by default. I want to replace that default url on some specific pages if another canonical-url exists.

So I added following in head section of my blog,

{% if page.canonical_url != nil %}
  <link rel="canonical" href="{{ page.canonical_url }}"/>
{% endif %}

So whenever a post has canonical_url specified in it's front-matter above snippet adds that canonical url. But, there is also one default generated canonical url tag added by {% seo %} field.

Is this expected behavior, or do I need to get rid of default generated canonical url tag? And, if that's the case how can I replace default canonical url with custom one for specific pages?

[pathawks]

It is not currently possible to disable the plugin’s outputting of the canonical tag.

Can you explain your use case a bit more? Why do you want the canonical URL to point to a different domain?

[8parth]

I run my blog with Jekyll, and regularly post articles on different tech blogs. So, I want to republish content to my own blog with original article's url as canonical tag.

Is having two canonical links pointing to different domains(one at my website, one at original article link) okay? (I don't have much knowledge on SEO so if you can suggest me something or point me to right direction that'd be great)

[8parth]

Update: Currently jekyll-seo-tag merges site url with page url and generates final canonical url. If for a specific page canonical_url is explicitly defined by user, we can assign the url to canonical url otherwise use default generated url.

Here is my implementation:

# drop.rb
def canonical_url
  @canonical_url ||= begin
    if page["canonical_url"].present?
      page["canonical_url"].to_s.gsub(%r!/index\.html$!, "/")
    else
      filters.absolute_url(page["url"]).to_s.gsub(%r!/index\.html$!, "/")
    end
  end
end

@pathawks if this works fine I can submit PR or you can integrate these changes?

[jekyllbot]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not been commented on for at least two months.

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This issue will automatically be closed in two months if no further activity occurs. Thank you for all your contributions.

[benbalter]

if this works fine I can submit PR or you can integrate these changes?

@8parth Please do!

[8parth]

@benbalter this issue is solved with PR #211 and merged, so I am closing this issue. Thanks for providing opportunity to contribute!

[ylogx]

Following worked for me:

    {% if page.canonical_url != nil %}
    <link rel="canonical" href="{{ page.canonical_url }}"/>
    {% else %}
    <link rel="canonical" href="{{ page.url | replace:'index.html','' | prepend: site.baseurl | prepend: site.url }}">
    {% endif %}