Duplicate Content Problem Solved?
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Today’s internet is polluted with duplicate content. For some time now website owners have been battling with a solution to this annoying problem. Search engines try their best to index and display the original or “canonical” version of a URL. Up until now web masters worried that if search engines found multiple versions of a page, their link credibility would be diluted and they’ll lose rankings.
Just last week the major search engines announced that they have come together to offer a way to reduce duplicate content and make things easier for everyone. HORRAY!!!!
The Solution… The new canonical tag!
Duplicate content comes in many different forms, but one of the most popular is having multiple URL’s pointing to the same page. This can come up for lots of reasons. An online store might have various pages for one product such as different sizes, sort by price and so on. This can be a problem for a couple of reasons.
So how do we use the new canonical tag?
You simply add this <link> tag to specify your preferred version of the url:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish” />
inside the <head> section of the duplicate content URLs:
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&category=gummy-candy
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&trackingid=1234&sessionid=5678
and Google will understand that the duplicates all refer to the canonical URL: http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish. Additional URL properties, like PageRank and related signals, are transferred as well.
And that’s it!
Keep in mind you can only use the tag on pages within a site, sub-domains and sub-folders included.
It’s also ok to use relative or absolute links, but the search engines would like to see absolute links. The search engines also use this as a suggestion not a command but are more likely to use it if the URLs use best practices, such as:
Good luck and have fun adding the new canonical tag to your pages.
2 Comments on this post
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PPC Search Engine said:
Pick out some chunks of text and paste them into Google on exact search – you just put quotes around it “like this” – you will be able to see if your content has been indexed on other sites.
October 20th, 2009 at 10:56 am
[...] Blessings upon us, only last week the major search engines announced that they have agreed upon a way to reduce duplicate content and make things easier for everyone. Like trademarking an invention, or signing a painting, original webpages will have the ability to claim their work. This solution… the new canonical tag! [...]