Link Tag Gets Canonical Relationship Attribute
Posted: February 15th, 2009
A couple of days ago, the big three GYM search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live) announced their united support towards the new relationship attribute “canonical.”
This tag was created to better manage duplicate content that is generated by multiple URLs pointing to the same page - a common situation for large sites that automatically create dynamic links.
How To Use It
The “canonical” attribute is added to the link tag, and should be placed within the section of a web page as such:
< link rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com/original-content.html" / >
Other Notes
At this stage, this tag is not yet a directive but is considered a strong hint to the major search engines as to how you want them to treat your website. It’s possible for link juice to flow with this method too, although safety measure are in place to deter spammers from exploiting it. For example, the pages must have duplicate content between them.
The rel=”canonical” attribute should be handled with care and treated as if it were a permanent 301 redirect. While relative paths work with this attribute, it’s recommended that you stick to hard coding the canonical URLs.
Tags: code, Google, Live Search, SEO, Yahoo
It is nice to see those companies working together. Nice post, keep up the word. You explained a hard concept in simple words. Thank you.
Even though I do not understand the concept behind such things as this, I do find it very fascinating that individuals like yourself have this knowledge to pass on to others that do understand. I don’t know if I will ever be part of this community but I am learning new things everyday and that’s what makes this whole network business exciting to me. Keep the posts coming and hopefully I will get a better understanding because of your teaching and willingness to keep us informed. Thanks!