Definition: Canonical redirect
A canonical redirect is the gateway behaviour (canonical_redirects on a bucket prefix route, on by default) that 301-redirects alternate page URLs — trailing-slash and legacy .html forms — onto the single canonical URL the route publishes.
One URL per page, enforced by the route
Static content on the web accumulates spellings: /pricing, /pricing/, /pricing.html, /pricing/index.html. Search engines treat them as rival pages until told otherwise. A canonical redirect makes the gateway itself collapse them: alternate forms answer 301 to the canonical URL, so the consolidation is infrastructure behaviour, not a rewrite rule somebody must remember per page.
Companion settings that keep URLs honest
The same prefix route carries the related declarations: default_key serves index.html for /, fallback_mode decides whether unknown paths render the app (spa) or a hard 404 (not_found), and cdn_enabled puts cached delivery in front. Together they describe a site’s whole URL policy in a few lines that a reviewer can read.
Frequently asked questions
Alternate spellings of the same page — legacy .html forms and trailing-slash variants — redirect 301 onto the canonical clean URL. The canonical form is the one the route publishes and your sitemap should list.
Yes, canonical_redirects is a per-route boolean (default true). Turning it off is a deliberate, reviewed declaration — appropriate for the rare route that must serve several spellings as distinct resources.
That is fallback_mode’s decision: "spa" serves the default document with 200 for client-side apps, "not_found" returns a hard 404 — the honest choice for content sites whose analytics and indexing depend on truthful statuses.
Related capabilities, architectures, and comparisons
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