youfoundjake - 3:44 am on Feb 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

Not sure where to put this, but since google search is moderated, a mod will put where necessary.

Today it was annouced that the 3 big search engines have come up with a new tag to help with canoncial issues.
Announcements:
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com ]
[ysearchblog.com ]
[blogs.msdn.com ]

Using the new canonical tag Specify the canonical version using a tag in the head section of the page as follows: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish"/> That’s it! You can only use the tag on pages within a single site (subdomains and subfolders are fine). You can use relative or absolute links, but the search engines recommend absolute links. This tag will operate in a similar way to a 301 redirect for all URLs that display the page with this tag. Links to all URLs will be consolidated to the one specified as canonical. Search engines will consider this URL a “strong hint” as to the one to crawl and index.

< See also Canonical Tag Results: Share the stories - Positive / Negative / No Impact [webmasterworld.com] >

[edited by: tedster at 6:08 pm (utc) on April 2, 2009]