rel=canonical" - New Google Attribute

[shennon]

Hey Guys,

Google has recently released a new type of attribute. It's the rel="canonical" attribute. This attribute is used to specify a preferred domain, so that Google bots don't penalize you for duplicate content.

This is very useful for dynamic sites and forums.

Read more here: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

[jreseo]

Yahoo and Microsoft are also supporting this.

This is a very important feature for anyone who has problems with canonical URLs. Rather than a mess of 301 redirects, robots tags, rewrites, etc, you can just state the canonical URL for each page and let the search engines figure it out.

It will be very interesting to see how this could help rankings for a site. It should, since Google does say it will refocus page rank like a 301 redirect, which would make a big difference.

[Robdale]

Thanks shennon, The new attribute rel="canonical" is really helpful. But, Does it affect the Page Ranking?

[cscgal]

Awesome, thanks :)

[sam09]

Yahoo and Microsoft are also supporting this.

yep, I also read about it one another blog.