WordPress auto-generated “canonical” links – how to add a custom URL parameter?

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Does anyone know how to modify the WordPress canonical links to add a custom URL parameter?

I have a WordPress site with a page that queries a separate (non-Wordpress) database. I passed the URL parameter “pubID” to display individual books and it is working OK.

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Example: http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/catalog/browse/item/?pubID=63

But the individual book pages are not showing up properly in Google – the ?pubID parameter is stripped out.

I think maybe this is because all the item pages have the same auto-generated “canonical” URL link tag in the source – one with the “pubID” parameter stripped out.

Example: link rel=’canonical’ href=’http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/catalog/browse/item/‘

Is there a way to perhaps edit .htaccess to add a custom URL parameter to WordPress, so that the parameter is not stripped out by permalinks and the “canonical” links?

Or maybe there’s another solution … Thank you for any ideas!

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  1. You should be able to replace WordPress’s rel_canonical action function with your own function in which (when your conditions are meet) you create a canonical link appending the query string variable. The following should work, although you’ll probably need to change the conditions to meet your needs.

    remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');
add_action('wp_head', 'my_rel_canonical');

function my_rel_canonical() {
    if (is_page('item') && isset($_GET['pubID'])) {
        global $post;
        $link = get_permalink($post->ID) . '?pubID=' . absint($_GET['pubID']);
        echo "<link rel='canonical' href='$link' />n";
    } else {
        rel_canonical();
    }
}