SMX West 2009: Ask The Search Engines

Matt Cutts: Duplicate Content

link rel=

”canonical” value =

”http://www.example.com/page.html”/>

This is a hint not a directive/mandate/requirement. Search engines choose when to use the suggestion.

This doesn’t work across domains…only the same domain but it does work across the same domain / hosts. Similar to a 301/perm redirect. Pages don’t have to be bit-for-bit identical, but they should be similar. Can use relative or absolute url’s, but absolute url’s are recommended. Can possibly follow a chain of canonicals but don’t count on it.

Matt: High page rank means Google will more likely crawl you deeply.

Matt: Can’t 301 a penalty to a site that’s not yours.

Matt: Google Japan needs to held to the same standard as anyone else…Matt manually lowered the Page Rank of Google.co.jp from 9 to 5.

Matt: Much more harsh with link sellers as opposed to link buyers.