Link tag

[phpmotion]

What is the purpose of the canical link tag in your page headers for Google?

[geek]

it lets all the search engines know where the link to your preferred content is located.

[wilber]

If you have the same content with two links to it then this will help the SE know where it originated from.

[clipshare]

Although some search engines have advised that we should use it I haven't because I can't know what page the search engine is on to redirect it.

[wilber]

Google in particular leaves it up to the website owner to decide that, so its pretty much your choice whether to use it or not.

[geek]

How much do other sites pay attention to that? I wonder if Yahoo and MSN will follow that or still do their own thing?

[wilber]

They do follow it or at least they say they do. I actually think they were following it before Google joined in with it.

[youtube]

I use it for sites that have the same content for mobiles. The show only the text version but I don't want them indexing my site that way.