Canonical URLs

I've read that adding canonical urls to products will avoid SEO problems with duplicate content created by the different categories and menus making different urls for the same product. I've looked at various forum posts here but I'm afraid I'm still not clear what url I need to add to the canonical url box on the product page.

At the moment an example of my shortest url is http://localhost:8888/garters/lace/product/4-carrie. I have Joomla global configuration set to use search engine friendly urls and url rewriting. Obviously I'm still testing on my local machine. Do I have to put that whole url in the canonical url box, or can I make a shorter one, eg www.domain.com/carrie ? Or does that need another plugin? Can I test this on localhost or will I have to wait until my site goes live and then add the canonical urls with the domain name?

Thanks, as ever.

Hi,

The canonical url is read by the robot, so on localhost it will not have any effect.
You have to set the urls with the domain name.

The url to use in the canonical field, is the shortest valid url to access the product. In your case: domain.com/garters/lace/product/4-carrie
If you have configured the sef component to reach the product page via: domain.com/carrie , so you can use this one, else not.

Thank you.