I don't want Google to be confused

[fomayof928@mowline]

Or this, this is a print version. This is ABC.com/aprint.html. So, in all of these cases, what I want to do is I want to tell Google, "Don't index this. Index this. Don't index this. Index this. Don't index this. Index this."


I can do this by using, the link rel=canonical, href is telling Google, "This is the page." You put that in the header tag of any document and Google will know, "Ah, this is a copy or a clone or a colombia number data of this other one. I should canonicalize all my ranking signals, and I should make sure that this other version ranks."

By the way, you can go to the reference yourself. So it's perfectly fine for ABC.com/a to go ahead and use that too, pointing to itself. That way, if someone you've never even met decides to put a question mark, some weird parameter and point to you, you're still saying to Google, "Hey, guess what? This is the original version."

Great, so since, I can use this canonicalization process. The rel=canonical tag is a great way to go. By the way, FYI, it can be used cross-domain. So, for example, if I republish content on A to a Medium.com/@RandFish, which is, I think, my Medium account, /a, guess what? I can put a cross-domain rel=canonical to tell them, "This is it." Now, even if Google crawls that other website, they'll know that this is the original version. Very cool.