Jul 21, 2009
YouTube introduces the canonical tag on usernames
Earlier this year I tweeted that YouTube were guilty of not using the Google-promoted canonical tag when it came to multiple versions of the username profile page. So this:
http://www.youtube.com/mattcutts
and
http://www.youtube.com/user/mattcutts
both end up appearing in the index, as in this SERPs at the time:
However, now it looks like they’ve got their house in order and introduced the tag to tidy up the results:
Now, I’m sure that it wasn’t because of my humble tweet that YouTube made the change, but I’m glad that Google are practicing what they preach across their sites.
But, what does it mean for everyone else? Well if you’re an SEO and wondering about the real usefulness of “new” tags such as these are, then these indications do matter. Google has come under increasing criticism due to their seemingly “high and mighty” attitude to making proclamations that affect SEOs; but by at least practicing what they preach they are at least showing willing. Now we just have to find out where they use nofollow inappropriately…
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