Canonicalisation tag on which page?

[abushahin]

Hey Guys,
Ok i've finally decided to rewrite my urls using apache, this means i will have tons of duplicate content.
Now Im not entirely sure how this works but all I know is I should use canonicalistion for same page.
Ok so:
old page:

page.php?id=11&p=books

new page:

page-11-books

both the above pages will have the same content so which page should have that canonicalisation tag?
any help much appreciated.

[Andy Langton]

The principle is that you only want Google to find one URL per item of content that you have. And you use the canonical tag to reference your preferred URL for that content.

From the above, I would assume that's going to be page-11-books.

A more robust solution would be to force your preferred URL format with a 301 redirect. For guidance on that, check the Apache forum [webmasterworld.com] where there are plenty of code examples already :)