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Social Media URL Duplication and the Canonical Link Element
November 06, 2009
When most people discuss the canonical link element, they describe its usage in the context of duplicate content mitigation, such as www vs non-www content, print-friendly pages, and so on. This is entirely appropriate. But the ways that we're all creating duplicate content are constantly growing and changing, which means that even if you think you don't need to canonicalize your pages, you might be wrong.
This post discusses how using the canonical link element might help you even if you don't think you need it.
Quick question: Should you use the canonical tag on your pages even if you're not sending out multiple versions of them?
Absolutely.
Why?
Because someone else might be creating versions of your pages that you don't even know about.
Here's an example: When I share something in my Google Reader, here's what happens:
- Twitterfeed grabs my Google Reader "public" RSS feed, which is how my shared items are dispersed.
- Twitterfeed takes the URL I'm sharing and appends two UTM tags to it -- "source" and "campaign".
- Via Twitterfeed, Bit.ly shortens the long URL (including UTM tags) that I'm sharing.
- Twitterfeed shoots the title of the post and shortened URL out over the @intrapromote Twitter stream.
In other words, I might read this URL:
http://searchengineland.com/blocking-and-tackling-10-fundamentals-of-local-seo-29115
But when I share and tweet it, it ends up looking like this:
http://searchengineland.com/blocking-and-tackling-10-fundamentals-of-local-seo-29115?utm_campaign=ipshare&utm_source=reader
Basically, I've created a duplicate URL for Search Engine Land, which they didn't ask for and probably don't know about. But the crew over there has anticipated this, because when you look at the source code for the page I created, you see this code:
link rel="canonical" href="http://searchengineland.com/blocking-and-tackling-10-fundamentals-of-local-seo-29115" /
This tag tells engines that no matter what tags I (or anyone else, including SEL) puts on those pages, this one is the authority.
UTM tags, of course, are primarily for measuring the effectiveness of your own social media endeavors on your own content, but the idea of someone appending tags to your content isn't far-fetched. Don't rule out people wanting to measure everything -- including their effect on other sites' traffic. Agencies use it to measure their efforts to a variety of client sites, and ad-selling sites use it for case study purposes to illustrate their reach.
Search Engine Land likely uses the canonical tags to consolidate authority because of their own tracking tags. But in this case, I've shown how someone on the outside can splinter your authority. It's pretty easy to add this tag to your pages (despite the obvious fact that I haven't done it on this blog yet), and the more ways you distribute your content, the more sense it makes to find the time to do it.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at November 6, 2009 07:33 AM
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