SEO Updates - the Latest from Google

Posted on | April 15, 2009 |

By Tom Lynch
Duplicate content can present a problem for your website on Google. Duplicate content can get penalized altogether. If your site allows you to present the same page multiple ways Google would prefer you tell the spider, which is the one you want to be in the index. And if you do this, it will help that page perform better.

To do this:
Add the tag to let Google know which one authoritative:

Inside the section of the duplicate content URLs IE:

http://www.website.com/product.php?item=book-on-publishing&category=books-on-sale
http://www.website.com/product.php?item= book-on-publishing&trackingid=0123&sessionid=4567

and the Google spider will know that all the duplicates really mean go here: http://www.website.com/product.php?item=book-on-publishing for the authoritative or canonical version.

Quoting Google: “Other URL properties, like PageRank and related signals, are transferred as well.”

This is great news for the definitive page. That page’s pagerank should do better in search results pages as a result.

Tom Lynch is Director of Client Satisfaction IMP!