audit_canonicals: Audit Declared Canonical Links

In pagerankr: Modular Toolkit for PageRank Calculation

Audit Declared Canonical Links

Description

Analyzes a 'rel=canonical' data frame and returns a diagnostic report covering chain lengths, loops, conflicting sources (a page declaring multiple distinct canonicals), self-referencing canonicals, and terminal destinations. Mirrors [audit_redirects()] for the canonical signal; useful as a pre-flight check before passing 'canonicals_df' to [pagerank()].

Declared canonicals are an **advisory** signal, distinct from enforced 3xx redirects. To see how the two interact – which one wins on a shared source, and which canonicals are ignored because their source also redirects – use [audit_fold()].

Usage

audit_canonicals(
  canonicals_df,
  edge_list_df = NULL,
  canonical_from_col = "from",
  canonical_to_col = "to",
  edge_from_col = "from",
  edge_to_col = "to"
)

Arguments

canonicals_df	A data frame of declared canonical links, pairing a source URL with the canonical it declares.
edge_list_df	Optional data frame of edges. If provided, orphaned canonicals (sources not present in the edge list) are identified.
canonical_from_col, canonical_to_col	From/to columns in 'canonicals_df'. Default '"from"' / '"to"'.
edge_from_col, edge_to_col	From/to columns in 'edge_list_df'. Default '"from"' / '"to"'.

Value

A list with class '"canonical_audit"' mirroring the structure of [audit_redirects()]: 'n_rules', 'n_self_refs', 'self_refs', 'n_conflicts', 'conflicts', 'n_loops', 'loops', 'chains', 'max_chain_length', and (when 'edge_list_df' is given) 'orphaned_redirects' (orphaned canonical sources).

See Also

[audit_redirects()], [audit_fold()], [build_fold_map()]

Examples

canonicals <- data.frame(
  from = c("http://a?x=1", "http://b", "http://c"),
  to = c("http://a", "http://canon", "http://c")
)
audit_canonicals(canonicals)

pagerankr documentation built on Oct. 1, 2026, 5:09 p.m.