please, solve the board's index canonical URL

[Enkidu]

Hello

we have

www.example.com
www.example.com/index
www.example.com/index.php
www.example.com/index.php?/index

all pointing to the same page which might affect ranking. According to the Official Google webmaster Central Blog, it can be solved by rel="canonical".

I would love to see this one implemented

cheers

Enkidu

[Mark]

While I don't claim to be an SEO expert - I wold imagine that Google knows and expects domain.com and domain.com/index.something to point to the same location...

[Enkidu]

[quote name='Mark' date='05 November 2009 - 07:45 AM' timestamp='1257407159' post='1875783']
While I don't claim to be an SEO expert - I wold imagine that Google knows and expects domain.com and domain.com/index.something to point to the same location...


there are endless varieties of queries that point to the index page, here are some example:

http://community.invisionpower.com/index.php?/index

http://community.invisionpower.com/index.php?/index.php?f=page-that-doesnt-exit

http://community.invisionpower.com/index.php?page=7437&forum=i-love-you

[Ditchmonkey]

[quote name='Mark' date='04 November 2009 - 11:45 PM' timestamp='1257407159' post='1875783']
While I don't claim to be an SEO expert - I wold imagine that Google knows and expects domain.com and domain.com/index.something to point to the same location...


Usually I wouldn't assign any merit to random SEO requests. However, when Google highlights the issue in their own blog, and suggests a solution, I think its worth looking at.

[Mark]

Well, we do use canonical links in IP.Board where appropriate, but for some of the examples you gave:



IP.Board wouldn't link to that.... and you could do that on any page, even Google's home page:

I don't think the idea is to add rel='canonical' to every dynamic page.



I'm by no means saying it's a bad idea or won't be included... I'm just thinking you underestimate Google's algorithms - I reckon it knows without the use of canonical tags that domain.com and domain.com/index.something are the same page.

 http://community.invisionpower.com/index.php?/index.php?f=page-that-doesnt-exit

http://www.google.com/webhp?f=page-that-doesnt-exit

[Enkidu]

here is a snap shot of what Google found in my webmaster account:



but that was under double meta-tag description :blink:

[Brandon D]

[quote name='Mark' date='06 November 2009 - 04:03 AM' timestamp='1257498181' post='1876247']
I'm by no means saying it's a bad idea or won't be included... I'm just thinking you underestimate Google's algorithms - I reckon it knows without the use of canonical tags that domain.com and domain.com/index.something are the same page.

domain.com doesn't have to be domain.com/index.something, so no, it can't just assume they're the same page.

[Mark]

[quote name='Brandon D' date='06 November 2009 - 11:26 AM' timestamp='1257506773' post='1876292']
domain.com doesn't have to be domain.com/index.something, so no, it can't just assume they're the same page.


Well of course - but there has to be an index page, be it "index.x" or "default.x" or whatever else - it's not duplicate content though, is it? It's an index page that can be accessed either directly, or by going to the domain.

[Brandon D]

Duplicate content is content that can be accessible by more than one URL - so yeah, I'd say it's duplicate content. I'm not an SEO expert either, though ;)

Point is, not only can the files be different, but you can use htaccess, scripting language, apache, etc to display different content based on whether they entered foo.com or foo.com/index.php, so it's no different from any other page Google indexes.

[Enkidu]

[quote name='Mark' date='06 November 2009 - 09:03 AM' timestamp='1257498181' post='1876247']
Well, we do use canonical links in IP.Board where appropriate, but for some of the examples you gave:


I don't think the idea is to add rel='canonical' to every dynamic page.



I'm by no means saying it's a bad idea or won't be included... I'm just thinking you underestimate Google's algorithms - I reckon it knows without the use of canonical tags that domain.com and domain.com/index.something are the same page.


well, Matt Cutts of Google in the presentation below is saying the exact thing that I talked about, so yeah, Google distinguish between the www version and the non-www, and home.html and non html versions

here is it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm9onOGTgeM

 http://community.invisionpower.com/index.php?/index.php?f=page-that-doesnt-exit

IP.Board wouldn't link to that.... and you could do that on any page, even Google's home page:

http://www.google.com/webhp?f=page-that-doesnt-exit

[bfarber]

Quite frankly I think too many people underestimate Google. It's not like this is year 1 of their attempt at indexing web sites. They know pretty well how to handle the indexing by now. ;)

Not against the canonical tag and it's not that hard to do, just saying I don't think it's likely to make a huge amount of difference in the end.

[Enkidu]

[quote name='bfarber' date='06 November 2009 - 03:23 PM' timestamp='1257521024' post='1876376']
Quite frankly I think too many people underestimate Google. It's not like this is year 1 of their attempt at indexing web sites. They know pretty well how to handle the indexing by now. ;)

Not against the canonical tag and it's not that hard to do, just saying I don't think it's likely to make a huge amount of difference in the end.


the issue is not with indexing at all it's about which one to use? just watch the presentation in the very post before yours. This one is given by Matt Cutts who works for the Search Quality group in Google, so he has an idea what he's talking about :)

[Enkidu]

on the contrary, from SEO point of view, the more back-links you have to a page , the better its ranking will be. So instead of having let's say:

1- 100 links to example.com/index
2- 50 links to example.com/index.php?lindex
3- 130 links to example.com/

when you use canonical tag, the search engine would treat all these link as if they are pointing to same page thus increasing your back link to 280.

Not against the canonical tag and it's not that hard to do, just saying I don't think it's likely to make a huge amount of difference in the end.