Google, Yahoo, Microsoft all unite on Canonical URL
One of the most overlooked and potentially harmful pieces of the SEO puzzle deals with a websites potential duplicate content issues. The top three search engines are tackling this issue head on with support for a new HTML <link> tag. The new tag will be used by search engines to determine the preferred (canonical) URL for a given page and define the relationship between a webpage and an external source.
For example, your main URL is http://www.mysite.com/stuff.aspx - you would add the following code in the <head> section of your page to define it as the canonical URL: <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.mysite.com/stuff.aspx”>. Now, regardless of any added tracking parameters or other variations to the URL the search engines will know which URL is primary.
One thing to keep in mind is that the new tag will be viewed as a “hint” by search engines and not as a command. Therefore, webmasters still need develop clean linking structures and domain canonicalization.
For more information on the changes made by the search engines visit: The Microsoft, Google and Yahoo blogs.
Comments
Comment from 5ubliminal
Time: March 26, 2009, 5:50 am
Try this Canonical URL Wordpress Plugin.
Comment from Patrick
Time: February 17, 2009, 6:30 am
I’d like to say thank you very much for the information because I would not learn of the innovations.