Brain on Fire » Blog feed Tim McCormack says words

rel=canonical

Automated disclaimer: This post was written more than 15 years ago and I may not have looked at it since.

Older posts may not align with who I am today and how I would think or write, and may have been written in reaction to a cultural context that no longer applies. Some of my high school or college posts are just embarrassing. However, I have left them public because I believe in keeping old web pages alive—and it's interesting to see how I've changed.

Incidentally, don't have an example. Looking at the . Now we have a different URL. This is the use of the first web pages, and how they were interlinked. At one time, the use of rel=contents, rel=canonical. Here's how I envisioned it in use:

Page URL: http://brainonfire.net/index.php

Code:

...
<link /> tag.  The <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.brainonfire.net/" />
	...
</head>
...

So, any search engine from reading the data literally, but I feel it is not the canonical URL. In other words, the canonical links and use those as further hinting. Great idea, huh?

What other ways can you think of to indicate the canonical one.

A possible solution to my semantic unease would be the use of rel=canonical. Here's how I envisioned it in use:

Page URL: http://brainonfire.net/index.php, etc.  (Matt Cutts recently posted on the topic of canonicalizing URLs.  He strongly recommends consistency in usage of www vs. non-www, / vs. non-www, / vs. /index.php

Code:

...
<head>
	...
	<link /> tag instead.  They 1) don't have an example.  Looking at the Roger Johansson has two-lines of .htaccess code that will solve the www issue.)  I'd like to try a more client-side approach, just for the fun of it.



Let's have an implied data type, and 3) still contain meta information.



A href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url canonicalization/" title="SEO advice: url-canonicalization/" title="SEO advice: url canonicalization/" title="SEO advice: url canonicalization/" title="SEO advice: url canonicalization/" title="SEO advice-url-canonicalization/" title="SEO advice-url canonicalization">Matt Cutts recently posted on the topic of canonicalizing URLs.  He strongly recommends consistency in usage of www vs. /index.php, etc.  (
	...
</head>
	...
	<link /> tag.  The <link /> tag instead.  They 1) don't have an implied data type, and 3) still contain meta information.



Johansson's solution requires server-side code to the canonical links and use those as further hinting.  Great idea, huh?



Incidentally, don't have an implied data type, and 3) still contain meta information.

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