Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google agree on canonical link t

I hope to have time later today to write up a more lengthy review, but
for now, it seems there are probably a few folks on this list that
will find interest in the summary located @
http://xmlhacker.com/news/microsoft-yahoo-google_canonical-link-tag.html

> Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have announced an agreed upon format for content creators and webmasters to declare multiple pages reached via multiple URI's as
> being one in the same. In short: <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/foo.html"/> can be declared inside the /html/head element of http://example.com/?page=foo,
> http://example.com/?category=foo, http://example.com/news/foo.html, etc. and the top three search engines based on market share will treat all three as the same, indexing
> and linking to the canonical URI of http://example.com/foo.html rather than all three.

I believe this presents a /much/ needed tool for the browser-based
XSLT developer as it provides the ability to use both PI and
JavaScript based transformations of content within the browser without
paying the "dynamically generated content doesn't get indexed" cost
that up until now was a significant concern for a lot of folks.  The
one requirement, of course, is using a static XHTML source file for
each URI that is served up to all requesting clients with the proper
canonical URI embedded in the href attribute of an /html/head/link
element that points to a statically rendered, and therefore indexable,
version of the same content that's rendered dynamically via either a
PI invoked transformation and/or JavaScript-based transforms that are
invoked during and/or after the document loading process on clients
that support client-side transformations.  A small price to pay, in my
own opinion, to gain the advantages of both client-side
transformations and Google, MSFT, and Yahoo properly indexing your
sites content.

Links to announcements [1,2,3]

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/archive/2009/02/12/partnering-to-help-solve-duplicate-content-issues.aspx
[2] http://ysearchblog.com/2009/02/12/fighting-duplication-adding-more-arrows-to-your-quiver/
[3] http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
--
/M:D

M. David Peterson
Co-Founder & Chief Architect, 3rd&Urban, LLC
Email: m.david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | m.david@xxxxxx
Mobile: (206) 999-0588
http://3rdandUrban.com | http://amp.fm |
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/m-david-peterson/