[wp-hackers] Canonical integration into core

[Nathan Rice]

And Chris goes and stabs his co-worker in the back! ;-)

OK, I won't concede making it a template tag, but you guys are obviously in
the majority here. Put the damn thing in core. :-)

Nathan

My Website
http://www.nathanrice.net/

My Twitter
http://twitter.com/nathanrice


On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Joost de Valk <joost at yoast.com> wrote:

> Amen! Well spoken!
>
>
> On 17 feb 2009, at 17:50, Chris Jean <gaarai at gaarai.com> wrote:
>
>  I understand where you are coming from Nathan, but I think that this
>> canonical tag is a different sort of beast and shouldn't be treated as an
>> SEO fad.
>>
>> People spammed their duplicate content all over a site to try to improve
>> their keyword rankings. Search engines protected their search results by
>> lowering value of duplicate content. Today's dynamic URL structures present
>> a problem of providing what is technically the same exact content by
>> different names, not to try to improve rankings but to offer other benefits
>> such as tracking or to be easily read. This resulted in sites getting hit
>> with the duplicate content penalty. In order to correct this for legitimate
>> content producers that aren't trying to game the system, the search engine
>> devs have said, "here is a way that you good guys can stop being penalized".
>>
>> So, this is different than keywords, descriptions, title, etc in that this
>> field doesn't try to enhance your keyword ranking and can't be used to game
>> the system. Rather, it's just a safety measure to ensure that your site
>> isn't inadvertently punished due to search engines' actions to stem the tide
>> of spam content.
>>
>> It's true that the redirects that WordPress uses take care of most of this
>> issue, but there are many areas that have already been covered that aren't
>> adequately protected. I'd rather have the WP devs spend their time finding
>> and addressing every possible avenue where duplicate content could be shown
>> than rely on every individual theme developer to do that independently.
>>
>> To me, the only reason to not have something in core and on by default is
>> if there is a rational reason to not want it. Since this is 1) not an SEO
>> enhancement to artificially improve ranking, 2) is blessed by the big
>> players, and 3) doesn't do anything to affect valid markup, I can see no
>> reason why anyone would not want this on their WordPress site.
>>
>> Adding a template tag is great and all, but I'd rather theme developers
>> focus on creating great looking themes with advanced features rather than
>> reading the latest buzz about meta tag standards and practices.
>>
>> Chris Jean
>> http://gaarai.com/
>> http://wp-roadmap.com/
>> http://dnsyogi.com/
>>
>>
>>
>> Nathan Rice wrote:
>>
>>> Joost,
>>> This is one of my main concerns with it being "on by default".  I cringe
>>> when I think about utter saturation of a new "SEO technique".  It makes
>>> the
>>> technique useless. Think meta keywords, description, and keyword stuffing
>>> in
>>> <title>.
>>>
>>> FWIW, the nofollow was to fight spam, primarily, was it not?
>>>
>>> But generally, I agree with Cutts ... it should be a core option.  But
>>> make
>>> it a friggin' template tag.
>>>
>>> Just say NO to saturation! ;-)
>>>
>>> My Website
>>> http://www.nathanrice.net/
>>>
>>> My Twitter
>>> http://twitter.com/nathanrice
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Joost de Valk <joost at yoast.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>  Sound bite from Matt Cutts, in reply to me telling him about this
>>>> discussion:
>>>>
>>>> "that's great! Canonical tags should be added to WP core cautiously and
>>>> with thoughtful deliberation, but I support it."
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Joost
>>>>
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