Matt Cutts: don't worry about 1-3 versions of same article on site

[nealrodriguez]

duplicate content question [mattcutts.com]

I often get questions from whitehat sites who are worried that they might receive duplicate content penalties because they have the same article in different formats ( e.g. a paginated version and a printer-ready version). While it’s helpful to try to pick one of those articles and exclude the other version from indexing, typically a whitehat site doesn’t neet to worry about 1-3 versions of an article on their own site.

however, you split the page rank that could be consolidated to one page because some links point to one version, while other links point to the other version.

i am working with enterprise sites that have thousands of duplicated articles. how much of a priority is it to handle this? will going for page rank consolidation through 301s or canonical tags provide a significant lift?

[texasville]

Recently the big 3 got together (and later ask.com) and developed a tag to drop into the header of your page delineating the exact way that a page from a site should be indexed. Isn't it about time that they also accept one that delineates it is a print page or a mobile page?
ie: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com" /> is the new rescuer.
How about: <link rel="print" href="http://www.example.com" /> and also <link rel="mobile" href="http://www.example.com" />....
I know that this shouldn't be neccessary..but look what it has come down to with the canonical tag...instead of the major search engines healing their algos...they are asking millions of websites to cure it for them..lol..
But seriously..while they are talking to each other, let's slip these other two in.

[nealrodriguez]

well, just to play devil's advocate, it may help those that are not technologically apt to perform redirects; i worked with a site on a windows box, and i had no access to the iis interface to fix canonical issues on static pages.