Let me ask a different way: what does rel=canonical or rel=nofollow have to do with *presentation* of content?<div><br></div><div>Let me ask yet another way: what is the potential impact of changing Themes, if rel=canonical or rel=nofollow are defined *by the Theme*?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Chip<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 4:30 PM, Angelo Bertolli <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:angelo@bertolli.org">angelo@bertolli.org</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><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&#39;t think theme developers should be restricted from using<br>
rel=&quot;canonical&quot; just because some of them may use it wrong, or because<br>
Google treats it a certain way for search results.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
On 03/06/2012 05:24 PM, Chip Bennett wrote:<br>
&gt; The criterion for me is Presentational vs Functinoal. I think that<br>
&gt; rel=canonical clearly falls under &quot;Functional&quot;, and therefore is Plugin<br>
&gt; territory.<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; Chip<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Emil Uzelac &lt;<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com">emil@themeid.com</a><br>
</div><div class="im">&gt; &lt;mailto:<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com">emil@themeid.com</a>&gt;&gt; wrote:<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;     I was reading from my phone....<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;     I agree that Themes should not mess with rel=&quot;canonical&quot; at all.<br>
&gt;     Majority people are devs not SEO consultants. Required not to use is<br>
&gt;     what I believe we should do.<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;     On Mar 6, 2012 4:17 PM, &quot;Joost de Valk&quot; &lt;<a href="mailto:joost@yoast.com">joost@yoast.com</a><br>
</div><div class="im">&gt;     &lt;mailto:<a href="mailto:joost@yoast.com">joost@yoast.com</a>&gt;&gt; wrote:<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;         It has nothing to do with using my plugin or not. It&#39;s something<br>
&gt;         even my plugin can&#39;t fix :-)<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;         Best,<br>
&gt;         Joost<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;         Sent from my iPhone<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;         On 6 mrt. 2012, at 23:14, Emil Uzelac &lt;<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com">emil@themeid.com</a><br>
</div><div class="im">&gt;         &lt;mailto:<a href="mailto:emil@themeid.com">emil@themeid.com</a>&gt;&gt; wrote:<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;         If they do not use your plugin would this hurt the SEO?<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;         On Mar 6, 2012 3:47 PM, &quot;Joost de Valk&quot; &lt;<a href="mailto:joost@yoast.com">joost@yoast.com</a><br>
</div><div class="im">&gt;&gt;         &lt;mailto:<a href="mailto:joost@yoast.com">joost@yoast.com</a>&gt;&gt; wrote:<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             Hi all,<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             tldr version: I would like a guideline that tells theme<br>
</div>&gt;&gt;             developers to /not/ include a rel=canonical link in their<br>
<div class="im">&gt;&gt;             theme as it hurts people more than it helps in a lot of cases.<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             long version:<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             As some of you probably know, I do a lot of SEO<br>
&gt;&gt;             consultancy. Some of it is related to people who have<br>
&gt;&gt;             suddenly lost all their rankings and want me to help fix<br>
&gt;&gt;             it for them. Today I helped out a blogger, unpaid because<br>
&gt;&gt;             I just liked his blog as it was about children with Down<br>
&gt;&gt;             Syndrome.<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
</div>&gt;&gt;             He had recently switched themes /and /started using my<br>
<div class="im">&gt;&gt;             WordPress SEO plugin, and of course he was blaming my<br>
&gt;&gt;             plugin for his sudden loss of rankings. What I found out<br>
&gt;&gt;             though, was that the theme had the following rel=canonical<br>
&gt;&gt;             link in the header.php:<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             &lt;link rel=&quot;canonical&quot; href=&quot;&lt;?php echo home_url(); ?&gt;&quot; /&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             above the call to wp_head. This was causing each<br>
&gt;&gt;             individual post to have a canonical point back to the<br>
&gt;&gt;             homepage. Now you should know that Google especially sees<br>
&gt;&gt;             a canonical as somewhat of a &quot;soft 301 redirect&quot;. It<br>
&gt;&gt;             basically takes a page that has a canonical pointing<br>
&gt;&gt;             elsewhere out of the rankings. The effect is quite dramatic.<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             This was a premium theme, whose authors I have since<br>
&gt;&gt;             emailed. It got me thinking though: is this in the WP.org<br>
</div>&gt;&gt;             &lt;<a href="http://WP.org" target="_blank">http://WP.org</a>&gt; guidelines? Apparently, it&#39;s not.<br>
<div><div class="h5">&gt;&gt;             WordPress itself adds a rel=&quot;canonical&quot; through wp_head on<br>
&gt;&gt;             single pages, and there&#39;s a patch in Trac to add it on<br>
&gt;&gt;             more pages. There are several themes in the repository<br>
&gt;&gt;             though that have absolutely 100% wrong canonical links in<br>
&gt;&gt;             their header.<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             This one: <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/digu" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/digu</a> is an<br>
&gt;&gt;             example. It&#39;s not popular and hasn&#39;t been updated in ages<br>
&gt;&gt;             so I wouldn&#39;t normally care too much, but I wanted to use<br>
&gt;&gt;             it as an example. It has the following code:<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             &lt;?php if(is_single()){ ?&gt;&lt;link rel=&quot;canonical&quot; href=&quot;&lt;?php<br>
&gt;&gt;             echo get_permalink($post-&gt;ID),&quot;\n&quot;;?&gt;&quot; /&gt;&lt;?php }?&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             &lt;?php if(is_home() || is_tag() || is_category() ||<br>
&gt;&gt;             is_month() || is_year()){ ?&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             &lt;link rel=&quot;canonical&quot; href=&quot;&lt;?php bloginfo(&#39;url&#39;);?&gt;&quot;<br>
&gt;&gt;             /&gt;&lt;?php echo &quot;\n&quot;; }?&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             …. snip ….<br>
&gt;&gt;             &lt;?php } ?&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             Using that theme on a live site could kill your rankings<br>
&gt;&gt;             instantly, as it would make all category listings etc have<br>
&gt;&gt;             canonicals linking back to the homepage. In most cases<br>
&gt;&gt;             this would prevent Google from spidering the links to the<br>
&gt;&gt;             posts on those pages.<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             Now some themes, like Thematic and Hybrid, have somewhat<br>
&gt;&gt;             more sensible canonical functions, which makes this a hard<br>
&gt;&gt;             discussion. I would vote to call it plugin territory<br>
&gt;&gt;             though and keep it out of themes completely. Would love to<br>
&gt;&gt;             hear your opinions.<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             Best<br>
&gt;&gt;             Joost<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;             _______________________________________________<br>
&gt;&gt;             theme-reviewers mailing list<br>
&gt;&gt;             <a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a><br>
</div></div>&gt;&gt;             &lt;mailto:<a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a>&gt;<br>
<div class="im">&gt;&gt;             <a href="http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers" target="_blank">http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers</a><br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt;         _______________________________________________<br>
&gt;&gt;         theme-reviewers mailing list<br>
&gt;&gt;         <a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a><br>
</div>&gt;&gt;         &lt;mailto:<a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a>&gt;<br>
<div class="im">&gt;&gt;         <a href="http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers" target="_blank">http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers</a><br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;         _______________________________________________<br>
&gt;         theme-reviewers mailing list<br>
&gt;         <a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a><br>
</div>&gt;         &lt;mailto:<a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a>&gt;<br>
<div class="im">&gt;         <a href="http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers" target="_blank">http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers</a><br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;     _______________________________________________<br>
&gt;     theme-reviewers mailing list<br>
&gt;     <a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a><br>
</div>&gt;     &lt;mailto:<a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a>&gt;<br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">&gt;     <a href="http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers" target="_blank">http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers</a><br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; _______________________________________________<br>
&gt; theme-reviewers mailing list<br>
&gt; <a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a><br>
&gt; <a href="http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers" target="_blank">http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers</a><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
theme-reviewers mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org">theme-reviewers@lists.wordpress.org</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers" target="_blank">http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>