Drupal and Canonical Links



In February 2009, a new setting came out from Google, Yahoo, and MSN (Live) called the canonical link. Canonical means "this is the best choice of all the duplicate content on my web site". It's a new link tag in the header of a web page designed to fix this problem of duplicate content on web sites. A webmaster indicates which duplicate page is the right one and that's the one that the search engines will index.

However, in a video explaining canonical links on Google, Google's search engine spam prevention guru, Matt Cutts, says that the best thing to do is to fix your CMS. Thanks to the Global Redirect module (and if you have your other modules configured properly), Drupal doesn't need canonical links.

How to install and configure the Global Redirect module

Carry out the following steps to install and configure the Global Redirect module:

1. The Global Redirect module installs just like any other Drupal module.

2. To configure the module, point your browser to http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/admin/settings/globalredirect or click on Admin | Site configuration | Global Redirect. You should see something like this:

3. The default settings are the right ones for most web sites. However, it can be helpful to know what's going on with Global Redirect (Source: Global Redirect help text).

4. Click Save configuration. Now your site is protected from duplicate content. Great job!

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Note: This article was sent to us by: Daniel H. Strents at 09152010

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