Are Canonical Tags About to Take Off?

It has been a year since Google, Yahoo! and Bing jointly announced the canonical tag but only last week did it emerge that Yahoo! and Bing were going to start supporting it.

Tackling the issue of duplicate content the canonical tag allows a specific URL to be chosen as the main port of call. Google announced in October 2009 that they will be fully supporting it but it has taken until now for Yahoo! and Bing to follow suit.

The announcement came during the much talked about ‘Ask The Search Engines’ session at SMX West last Thursday (4 March 2010). Both search engines confirmed they are currently supporting rel=canonical now and canonical tag support will be in place soon.

Only Using Canonical Tags as a Hint

Sasi Parthasarathy confirmed it on behalf of Bing whilst Arnab Bhattacharjee made a similar statement for Yahoo! Mr. Bhattacharjee did stress though that Yahoo! will only be using it as a hint tool as opposed to a definitive practice.

The practice of canonical tagging has the potential to greatly improve the life of Webmasters and can also help a site generate better exposure to their better content.

It is surprising that it’s taken these major search engines so long to pick up on this following the announcement. Yet with Google’s support of canonical tags across different domains now supported by Yahoo!’s and Bing’s uptake, its use and relevance is likely to grow in stock.