<p>Why would you use nofollow?</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mar 6, 2012 4:30 PM, "Angelo Bertolli" <<a href="mailto:angelo@bertolli.org">angelo@bertolli.org</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
So are theme developers also restricted from using nofollow? It is<br>
functional.<br>
<br>
I don't think theme developers should be restricted from using<br>
rel="canonical" just because some of them may use it wrong, or because<br>
Google treats it a certain way for search results.<br>
<br>
On 03/06/2012 05:24 PM, Chip Bennett wrote:<br>
> The criterion for me is Presentational vs Functinoal. I think that<br>
> rel=canonical clearly falls under "Functional", and therefore is Plugin<br>
> territory.<br>
><br>
> Chip<br>
><br>
> On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Emil Uzelac <<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com">emil@themeid.com</a><br>
> <mailto:<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com">emil@themeid.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> I was reading from my phone....<br>
><br>
> I agree that Themes should not mess with rel="canonical" at all.<br>
> Majority people are devs not SEO consultants. Required not to use is<br>
> what I believe we should do.<br>
><br>
> On Mar 6, 2012 4:17 PM, "Joost de Valk" <<a href="mailto:joost@yoast.com">joost@yoast.com</a><br>
> <mailto:<a href="mailto:joost@yoast.com">joost@yoast.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> It has nothing to do with using my plugin or not. It's something<br>
> even my plugin can't fix :-)<br>
><br>
> Best,<br>
> Joost<br>
><br>
> Sent from my iPhone<br>
><br>
> On 6 mrt. 2012, at 23:14, Emil Uzelac <<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com">emil@themeid.com</a><br>
> <mailto:<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com">emil@themeid.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
><br>
>> If they do not use your plugin would this hurt the SEO?<br>
>><br>
>> On Mar 6, 2012 3:47 PM, "Joost de Valk" <<a href="mailto:joost@yoast.com">joost@yoast.com</a><br>
>> <mailto:<a href="mailto:joost@yoast.com">joost@yoast.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> Hi all,<br>
>><br>
>> tldr version: I would like a guideline that tells theme<br>
>> developers to /not/ include a rel=canonical link in their<br>
>> theme as it hurts people more than it helps in a lot of cases.<br>
>><br>
>> long version:<br>
>><br>
>> As some of you probably know, I do a lot of SEO<br>
>> consultancy. Some of it is related to people who have<br>
>> suddenly lost all their rankings and want me to help fix<br>
>> it for them. Today I helped out a blogger, unpaid because<br>
>> I just liked his blog as it was about children with Down<br>
>> Syndrome.<br>
>><br>
>> He had recently switched themes /and /started using my<br>
>> WordPress SEO plugin, and of course he was blaming my<br>
>> plugin for his sudden loss of rankings. What I found out<br>
>> though, was that the theme had the following rel=canonical<br>
>> link in the header.php:<br>
>><br>
>> <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo home_url(); ?>" /><br>
>><br>
>> above the call to wp_head. This was causing each<br>
>> individual post to have a canonical point back to the<br>
>> homepage. Now you should know that Google especially sees<br>
>> a canonical as somewhat of a "soft 301 redirect". It<br>
>> basically takes a page that has a canonical pointing<br>
>> elsewhere out of the rankings. The effect is quite dramatic.<br>
>><br>
>> This was a premium theme, whose authors I have since<br>
>> emailed. It got me thinking though: is this in the WP.org<br>
>> <<a href="http://WP.org" target="_blank">http://WP.org</a>> guidelines? Apparently, it's not.<br>
>> WordPress itself adds a rel="canonical" through wp_head on<br>
>> single pages, and there's a patch in Trac to add it on<br>
>> more pages. There are several themes in the repository<br>
>> though that have absolutely 100% wrong canonical links in<br>
>> their header.<br>
>><br>
>> This one: <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/digu" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/digu</a> is an<br>
>> example. It's not popular and hasn't been updated in ages<br>
>> so I wouldn't normally care too much, but I wanted to use<br>
>> it as an example. It has the following code:<br>
>><br>
>> <?php if(is_single()){ ?><link rel="canonical" href="<?php<br>
>> echo get_permalink($post->ID),"\n";?>" /><?php }?><br>
>> <?php if(is_home() || is_tag() || is_category() ||<br>
>> is_month() || is_year()){ ?><br>
>> <link rel="canonical" href="<?php bloginfo('url');?>"<br>
>> /><?php echo "\n"; }?><br>
>> …. snip ….<br>
>> <?php } ?><br>
>><br>
>> Using that theme on a live site could kill your rankings<br>
>> instantly, as it would make all category listings etc have<br>
>> canonicals linking back to the homepage. In most cases<br>
>> this would prevent Google from spidering the links to the<br>
>> posts on those pages.<br>
>><br>
>> Now some themes, like Thematic and Hybrid, have somewhat<br>
>> more sensible canonical functions, which makes this a hard<br>
>> discussion. I would vote to call it plugin territory<br>
>> though and keep it out of themes completely. Would love to<br>
>> hear your opinions.<br>
>><br>
>> Best<br>
>> Joost<br>
>><br>
>><br>
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</blockquote></div>