Rel=Can’t Stand Them: Why the Rel=Canonical Tag Sucks
Dr. Pete Myers’ post, Rel=Confused? Answers to Your Rel=Canonical Questions, has reminded me that I have had a bee in my bonnet about the rel=canonical tag for a while that I’ve been meaning to get off my chest on these hallowed pages. In short, the rel=canonical tag sucks.
- You can’t always tell if they are working
- Contrary to what Dr. Pete says, they still often show up in the index after they have been crawled, which tends to freak clients out after they have put in the effort to add them
- They still often show up in the Duplicate Title Tag report in Google Webmaster Tools, leading clients to think that they are not working
- Per Dr. Pete’s post, they are often implemented incorrectly
- On big sites they still leave a huge number of URLs that take up crawl budget while adding no extra value
CAN”T STAND YA!
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