Good news from Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live who have announced support for the rel=”canonical” tag. This new tag with the following syntax:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever”>
This should be placed in the head section of each page of the site, with the URL that should be used as the primary URL for that page.
So if for example, if this page is linked to somewhere in the site with this URL:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever&trackingid=1234
where a tracking id has been appended, Google, Yahoo and MSN will now understand that this page is really the original:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever
Therefore the duplicate URL is not indexed and the link connectivity is assigned to the right page. This is a wonderful new tool that now allows sites with extensive tracking codes to use that technology without duplicate content issues. Additionally, sites have CMS systems or dynamic Web platforms that generate multiple URL combinations for the same page can now be brought under control without a huge list of 301 redirects. Cheers to the search engines for getting this one right.
Catfish
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Tags: Canonical, Google, Guides, Live Search, Yahoo
This is indeed GOOD NEWS! Thanks for the update Catfish. Hours and hours of effort in dealing with canonicalization/duplicate content issues have now been recouped…more time for strategy and execution.
yeah I mean, until I see it actually work on one of my projects I won't jump for joy yet. But hopefully we will soon see a big turn in the number of duplicate content problems we see. If nothing else this solves the age old tracking code problem of strings like ?tracking code causing multiple URLs indexed.
Interesting and informative post.
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Just a quick edit, the example you put should have a space and a closing slash near the end in order to properly validate the HTML
…whatever" />