Bin-Blog » Google

Avoid Duplicate Content – Use Canonical URL in WordPress

Binny V A — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:28:53 +0000

The new talk of the SEO world is ‘Canonical URL‘. What is canonical URL? This is the definition given in Google’s Webmaster Central Blog…

a format that allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL. If your site has identical or vastly similar content that’s accessible through multiple URLs, this format provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version.

Emphasis mine

It is very easy to specify the canonical URL of a page – all you have to do is add this line in the head section…

The purpose of this tag is to prevent the problem of duplicate content.

The best thing about this tag is that all three major search engines(Google, Yahoo and MS Live) support this initiative.

WordPress

If you are on wordpress, this tag can be integrated into your theme easily. There is a plugin to do the job for you – but you don’t need a plugin to do something as simple as this.

header.php

Go to the theme folder in wordpress(wp-content/themes/) and open the file header.php in your favorite editor. Now find the line…

and add the following code before that line…

Now, it should look something like this…

That’s it – you are done! Save the file and upload it to your server.

This fix will add the canonical URL tag to all the posts and pages of your blog. If you want to see a blog that have implemented this fix, take a look at the source of this page.

Google Reader has Search!

Binny V A — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:59:52 +0000

Finally – the feature I most wanted in Google Reader has been added. Its official people – Google Reader has search.

I have no idea why they took so long to add this feature – its ironic that Google fails to provide the search option.

Results Sorted by Date

The main complaint I have about the search feature is that the results are sorted by date and not by relevance. The below picture will make this very clear…

I would prefer that it is sorted by relevance – at least provide an option for that.

More Information

Google Gears – Offline Functionality for Web Apps

Binny V A — Thu, 31 May 2007 07:20:30 +0000

There has been many ideas about a offline storage mechanism for web applications. Dojo implemented this in its Library. Firefox 3 promises this. Now we have a new arrival in this area – Google Gears. Unlike Dojo’s implementation, Gears require an extension for it to work.

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline.

See Gears In Action

To see Gears in action, first install the extension…

Google Gears

Then go to Google Reader – you will see a ‘Offline’ mode button in the top right corner. If you click on that the script will download 2000 entries into your local database(SQLite).

To see this database, open up the Firefox Profile folder and enter the ‘Google Gears for Firefox’ folder. You will find many Database files there. Just open any of these in a SQLite V3 supporting viewer.

After the download is complete, you can use the Reader without a net connection.

When you get the connection back, just click on the same button – all the changes will be send to the online server.

Advantages of the Google Gears

Once the extension is installed, the script will work across all the supported browser. No JavaScript hacks required.
Full featured Database support – this makes it much easier to work with.
Supported by Google
Open Source

Disadvantages of Google Gears

The user must install an extension for this to work.
Requires user action before going offline. If your connection breaks suddenly(as it often happens here in India), you are left with nothing.
All browsers are not supported(yet)
Beta software – some bugs are to be expected. But, this will be solved in time.

I am still exploring the code – expect a new post with working javascript examples soon.