As an SEO Consultant for Reload Media – I have what I refer to as a luxury, of managing many different websites across a broad range of industries and niches. This ‘luxury’ gives me access to an enormous amount of search data – which I’m sure many other SEO’s will agree with.

I love data. I love getting data and I love analysing it. I have often, in the past, spent hours going through the specifics of keyword rankings to give myself better insight with the intention of improving my understanding of search engine trends, changes and algorithm updates.

While I could spend hours writing about search engine changes in general, the purpose of this article is to discuss how similar (or dissimilar) the keyword rankings are in Bing & Yahoo.

On the 18^th of October, Yahoo published a blog post announcing that they had completed their algorithm transition update with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. It had taken 20 months, but they had finally completed it.

As a part of our process and procedures, we keep track of the search engine visibility for our client’s websites in both Yahoo & Bing. The questions we were so eager to find answers for was: “So, exactly how similar are Yahoo & Bing now?” and “Is it now worth us tracking both Yahoo & Bing?”. Sure, for the past few months Yahoo & Bing have always had ‘similar’ results, but were we about to see the keyword rankings in Yahoo & Bing become completely identical?

We wanted to find out. The process began by choosing three clients from three different niches / industries that we believed would be good for this report.  Stretching across a total of 615 different keywords, our initial focus was simply to compare the rankings data in Yahoo & Bing on their last rankings reports – all of which were within a week of writing this report.

The Difference between Yahoo & Bing Rankings

The data for these 615 keywords was recorded on the same day, more or less, at the same time. Rankings in Bing & Yahoo fluctuate so often that sometimes the rankings are absolutely nothing like they were the day before.

The number of keywords that had a rankings difference was 52 – but the number of keywords that had a rankings difference that was more than 1, was only 8. When we thought about the rankings difference being 1, we felt like it was so minimal, that it wasn’t enough to justify a dissimilar result. Any keyword where the difference was more than 1, really grabbed our attention. For the focus of this report though, we’ll include all 51 keywords.

The largest difference in keyword positions we encountered was 68+. This specific keyword is particularly niche to its industry and not overly competitive. Its rank in Bing was 32, yet it was not found within the top 100 in Yahoo.

The second highest keyword difference was 47+. Which, like the first keyword, is particularly niche to its industry and not very competitive and the result was the same. It ranked 53 in Bing, but was nowhere to be found in Yahoo.

Exact Rankings by Search Engine

The blue line represents Bing, while the red line represents Yahoo. For the most part, it’s easy enough to see the resemblance and how identical the rankings were. The two spikes are also represented in the graph below which displays keyword ranking differences.

Rankings Difference – Yahoo VS Bing

The graph above shows the 51 keywords that had at least 1 rankings place difference. The other 8 keywords (that had more than 1 rankings place difference) are easily identifiable.

This implied to us that while the rankings between Yahoo & Bing are essentially identical, there are still minor area’s where the two search engines handle things differently. There is always the possibility that one of these search engines was playing ‘catch up’ to the correct ranking placement though.

Which Keywords Performed Better?

The second step as part of this report was to find out which search engine ranked those 51 keywords in better positions. With 51 keywords, we knew we were going to have a winner, but the difference again was extremely small.

Bing was the winner. Out of the 51 keywords, 26 of them ranked higher in Bing than they did on Yahoo. This, once again proved to us that there really wasn’t much difference between Yahoo & Bing in terms of overall search visibility.

Keyword Performance by Client

We then took this data and thought it’d be good idea to break it down by client – to see if we could find any additional patterns or occurrences.

The first client we used for this report – we’ll refer to them as Client A, accounted for 21 (out of the total 51) of the keywords and Bing was the clear performer, with 14 keywords ranking better than the 7 in Yahoo.

Our second client (Client B) had 12 keyword ranking differences and of those 12, Yahoo performed better with 8 keywords in better ranking positions than Bing’s 4.

Finally, our third client (Client C) saw Yahoo edge out Bing slightly. Out of 18 keywords, 10 ranked better in Yahoo compared to the 8 that ranked better in Bing.

What Does This Data Tell Us?

This data tells us that while Yahoo & Bing more or less provide identical results, it’s quite clear that a website can perform better in one specifically. The difference will be extremely minor, and it could simply be an error with the time in which we recorded this data, but despite how similar they are – there will still be ranking differences and they still perform differently.

How Similar Were the Results Prior to the Transition?

As we keep track of many keywords on a monthly (and in some cases, weekly) basis, we knew it would be a good idea to compare this data over a four month period to see the keyword ranking differences.

We chose four keywords from the ‘differences’ list that we thought would be a good example to display month on month ranking data.

The data compared starts in August and goes through to the time of this report – November, keeping in mind that Yahoo made their announcement on the 18^th of October.

Yahoo & Bing’s Similarity is Inconsistent

The pattern here is that there is no pattern. The major difference in ranking positions for Keyword 1 was in October, for Keyword 2 it was in November, Keyword 3 it was in August and Keyword 4 it was August & September.

The only conclusion we drew from these graphs is that 80% of the time, the results in Yahoo & Bing are identical, the other 20% however – well, not so much. This also provides (for whatever reason) an inconsistency in either Yahoo or Bing. Or possibly even a combination of both.

Stay Tuned for Part 2 where we compare the combined average of Bing & Yahoo with similar data in Google!

Personally, I think now is the time for your SEO company to show exactly what they are made of. For the latecomer wishing to claim their stake of top-notch search engine real estate, there is serious ground to be made up (and it’s up to their SEO company to make this happen).

The ugly truth is that small businesses with confined resources may find it difficult to achieve optimal rankings on competitive, high traffic keywords. This is especially true, where larger or more web savvy businesses have already grabbed their stake. But wait. There’s no need to despair. Or worse, return to the lull and security of traditional advertising with your marketing budget in tow. Instead engage a SEO company who understands your marketing objectives and can develop an SEO programs to suit.

I can’t stress how important it is that your digital strategy be consistent with your overarching marketing strategy. Many SEO companies tend to lose sight of this  (to the detriment of their clients). If you are servicing a niche market make sure this is replicated online. Examining the search behaviour of your target market will help you to uncover SEO opportunities that exist for your business.

Once you have identified opportunities in your online market, keyword selection will be your best friend in achieving optimal rankings on Google, Yahoo and Bing. When selecting keywords consider not only the volume of traffic but also the competition associated with specific keywords. Rather than solely targeting high traffic keywords, take a look at those keywords that offer less traffic but are more in line with your target market. These keywords will often be surrounded by less competition and you will find it easier to achieve higher rankings on Search Engine Results Pages.

Once you have selected keywords relevant to your target market you will need to ensure that these are reflected in your website content. Many SEO companies tend to write for the omnipotent and omniscient search engines, losing sight of the end user (your target market). However, search engines ultimately look at providing search results for websites that are going to provide the best outcome for the user. By including rich and relevant content, written primarily for your target audience, you will subsequently be rewarded with high rankings on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).

So what’s the take home message? If you are looking to engage an SEO company or digital marketing company, it is vital that they understand your overarching marketing strategy. At the end of the day Google is interested in providing the best results for the user. Write for your target audience and Google and other search engines will reward you accordingly.

It relates to Google saying that from now on, the SSL (secure lock) search on Google will become the default setting for the users that are logged into a Google account. The claim is that Google has done this for privacy reasons to protect a user’s search data.

Google reckon that in the US there isn’t a large percentage of users affected (currently) and it’s in the single digit percentages, however it does mean some things for SEO and analysis of results from organic search traffic.

How does this impact on SEO then? Well I believe in these ways:

1. It takes us “back in SEO time” in terms of assisting the clients to see that after good, white hat SEO, non branded (non business or brand terms) are on the rise due to the efforts of SEO. It will make keyword rankings one of the only indicators and although still a valuable one, this isn’t the whole message that needs to be reported to a client. It also takes us away from being able to report on traffic with 100% accuracy.
2. A lack of data going to a client isn’t good for progress in the digital marketing space. Whilst we will still have 100% data from Google’s paid search in AdWords, basically we are having to reply on Google Webmaster Tools search data which doesn’t give us or our clients a “helicopter view” of the real search pattens and channels that are making the SEO campaign a success.
3. The old “SEO Voodoo Magic” will potentially come back in to play. Will this cause unscrupulous players in the market to cloud the market and leverage the ‘unknowns’? Will it essentially scare clients once again into using poor SEO practices? One to watch here as many of us in the SEO and digital marketing space have spent many years trying to avoid this.

Also, back comes the arguments about the long term future for SEO.  Whilst there is definitely still a massive market and need for SEO as long as Google doesn’t become fully paid (I don’t think they ever will), stripping away core data tracking only on SEO Organic results under the guise of privacy only serves to create confusion to clients about what SEO is and does for a business. This is at a time when clients were building to a good level of understanding and knowledge about how SEO and PPC can assist their businesses.

This is definitely one to watch closely over the next few weeks.

These changes caused many businesses to panic throughout the online world, as many companies saw a sudden drop in their search engine rankings, and were unsure why.

Why another update?

According to Google, this update was released to take another step towards giving people the most relevant results to their search queries, and was aimed at those websites and pages which have shallow and narrow content.

Google has been transparent in their efforts to improve their search engine, through rolling out continuous revisions and improvements to their algorithms, and the latest revisions saw emphasis being placed on the relevancy and quality of content. With the latest update to Google’s algorithm, the content appearing within organic results is more relevant to the subject being searched.

It goes back to the question of whether the search results best reflect the given search parameters. This means that Google has to separate the chaff from the grain, and if a website does not have anything to contribute, it is discarded.

How was this update developed?

Google’s algorithm change was a lengthy process. Data was extracted from Google searches, click-through rates, Chrome and Android use, and from Google toolbar usage. Survey results from critics and ordinary users were also used to develop the update.

Google Panda was a long term machine learning project which aimed at looking at the data, making it understandable, and then mining it for clues on what users wanted. Using machine learning techniques meant that the algorithm could continue to evolve and address the fundamental question of search: did the search results cater to the user’s needs?

A range of questions pertaining to web content and how valuable the content was were put forward to critics and, in turn, used to build and develop Google Panda. These questions included;

• Was the site informative, unbiased, and was it authoritative?
• Whether they would recommend the site to others?
• Were the articles well-written, readable and understandable?
• Would they trust the site for medical information?
• Would they be willing to give personal information and credit card data to this site?
• Did they enjoy the site or have any complaints about the site
• Did the site add any value-added proposition?
• Did they read any other pages on the site?
• And if they would go back to this web page?

Since the announcement of Google Panda, there has been a continuous rollout of small updates, with the latest updated; Panda 2.3.

So, how do websites meet Google Panda guidelines?

What it all boils down to is that Google can and will be more aggressive in changing search result rankings, which, as previously mentioned, adds more value for their users when using the search engine.

In order for websites to rank highly in Google, they need to present a unique value added proposition to the user, and have well-written content which is informative and entertaining. Thus, the overall usability of a website, user behaviour and quality content are now key factors for SEO.

Prior to this, Places listings were only accessible via a search within Google Maps.

In a further update, the Places listing map was moved on the top right hand side of the page – in what used to be AdWords territory!

After this critical alteration in Google’s search algorithm, it is now more vital than ever for every business to have their Places listing claimed, and most importantly, optimised.

So how can businesses take advantage of Google Places?

There are a few things to remember when creating your business’ Google Places listing:

• Claim your listing! This can done quickly and easily by either a phone call, SMS, or your very own post card from Google!
• Fill out as many of the fields as you can, paying special attention to the description and categories. This will have a significant impact on results, so choose these categories as wisely as you choose your website’s keywords.
• Upload photos to entice users to stay on the page and explore the entire listing.
• Encourage customers, friends and business partners to leave reviews on your listing in order to show Google that your listing is an authoritative source of reference.

Finally, and most importantly, a link back to your website not only shows your visitors where to go, but also provides a healthy link in Google’s eyes.

Google Places listings also offer a personalised dashboard which provides similar traffic statistics as Google Analytics, through which you can view:

• How many people have checked your listing;
• which keywords they have used to find it;
• and various tips and hints to maintaining your listing.

So there go. A quick guide as to the basics of Google Places listings!

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below!

An investment in Australia’s future or a needless waste of money? Regardless of your political stance on the impending roll-out of the National Broadband Network (NBN), it’s coming – and it will be a game changer.

Imagine this….

It’s the morning peak hour rush. Driving down what’s normally a 100km/h highway, you’re ploughing along at a measly 20. Tediously churning through first and second gears, your frustration levels teeter on the brink of capitulation. A glance over your right shoulder only compounds your irritation as countless cars fly past you in the transit lane…

Annoyed? You betcha!

Why? Because you know that you are capable of travelling faster.

A comparable situation will arise coinciding with the introduction of the NBN. Tasks that internet users currently consider ‘normal’ will be completed with ease, while a wealth of content-rich sites and pages will become more and more prevalent. The early adopters of the NBN will have a renewed plethora of available information, while users still ‘stuck in the traffic’ of current broadband technology become increasingly frustrated.

Given the exceeding willingness of modern consumers to quickly adopt new technology, the transition to faster internet is likely to be as swift as the NBN itself.

But what does this mean for your existing methods of internet marketing, or for businesses that are yet to engage in marketing through the online portal?

Below is a list of tips to ensure you stay ahead of your competitors in the diverse and ever-evolving world of internet marketing.

1. Ensure That You Can Be Found

Visibility is paramount. With more and more content set to be created and posted online, businesses risk getting lost in the clutter. The advertising industry is tipped to be worth $14.16bn by 2014 [1], and with the bulk of this expenditure expected to be online, advertisers must be conscious of competing within a highly competitive and saturated market.

With conventional domain names rapidly being exhausted, and with a growing proliferation of pages on the internet, it is vitally important that your visibility within search-engine results is high.

2. Integrate a Digital Marketing Strategy Into Your Marketing Mix

Australia already boasts one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world. The addition of the NBN is likely to increase penetration and usage, adding weight to the importance of digital marketing as part of your marketing mix. Below are some interesting statistics about internet marketing within Australia.

• 80.1% of Australians used the internet last year, placing the nation among the top ten in the world for internet usage [2]

• Last year, online advertising expenditure grew by 21% – double the previous growth in 2009 (PwC) [3]

• Online advertising is expected to increase by 15.4% each year [4]

• By 2014, internet advertising is forecast to overtake television and newspapers to become Australia’s biggest advertising medium [1]

3. Ensure That Consumers WANT To See Your Ads

When developing online advertisements, placement is crucial. Well targeted ads relevant to the content a consumer sees on a particular page are generally more successful than ads without such a positioning strategy.

Countless studies have shown that consumers despise intrusive ads (like pop-ups) and are unlikely to retain brand messages communicated within them. Conversely, Search Engine Marketing produces ads relevant to the search terms of consumers and are more likely to generate a profitable ROI.

SEM remains one of the most effective promotional tools available online and with the number of daily searches increasing exponentially, the opportunities available to businesses are too good to pass up.

4. Adaptation Is Essential To Survival

In the ever-changing and constantly evolving world of digital marketing, it is essential that advertisers pre-empt market trends and are not resistant to change. Here are some considerations for businesses currently participating in internet marketing.

• Continually monitor performance of your online campaigns

• Frequently update, change and optimise campaigns

• Don’t be complacent when achieving good results – Internet trends change quickly!

• Never be afraid to try something new! Consider the first-mover advantages of successful online models like Wotif, YouTube and eBay

5. Build Business-Brand Relationships

The online realm presents a wealth of opportunities for businesses to engage with their target markets. Implementing a Social Media Marketing campaign is an increasingly popular avenue to do this.

By December 2010, 9.5 million Australians [5] (around 40% of the population) were actively using social media site, Facebook, with the average session lasting 25 minutes. Embracing the vast potential of mediums such as these provides an opportunity for companies to engage with their target markets to build solid business-brand relationships.

Remember, brand equity is something that no competitor can take from you!

In Conclusion…

The introduction of the NBN and the failure to adopt new technology may have significant repercussions for your business’s profitability. If you are not already actively participating in digital marketing, you risk getting left behind in the ‘traffic jam’ of businesses without an online presence.

1. Lara Sinclar; The Australian. August 2, 2010. Internet Advertising to Dominate as NBN Tipped To Stimulate Media Growth
2. Australia: NBN – Far Reaching Implications for Existing Carriers and CSPs. April 5, 2011. www.mondaq.com
3. PwC Chief Media Analyst David Wiadrowski. As quoted in The Australian. August 2, 2010.
4. Australia – Digital Economy – Advertising, Statistics, Revenues and Forecast. ND. www.budde.com.au/research
5. SocialBakers Facebook-Statistics. www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics

Google Shopping is basically a product comparison search engine with one major difference to all the other competitors in this space – it’s completely free!

True to form, Google plan to earn their revenue through the extremely targeted AdWords ads that appear above the product results:

So what do you need to know about Google Shopping?

How does it work?

Google Shopping is available due to the Google Merchant Center (finally!) being made available in Australia.

The Google Merchant Center is a place where users can submit detailed data feeds of their product listings, availability, sizes etc. to Google so that these products can be indexed in Google product search and across the web. These product listings can be static or dynamic depending on the nature of your inventory.

Submitting a data feed by yourself can be tricky but is definitely doable. However, if you are having trouble, feel free to contact a consultant at Reload Media who can arrange this for you!

How do I access Google Shopping/product search?

To access Google shopping you can either visit Google.com.au/Shopping or just click the ‘Shopping’ tab on your left hand tool bar in Google:

Where will my products appear?

Not only will your products appear in the ‘Google Product Search’ results (as visible in our first example), but you now have the opportunity to extend your AdWords ads with product images, descriptions, prices and direct links to the product page:

Once again, this is a service that Reload Media now offers to our current and future clients!

Why would I want my products to be available in the Google shopping tab?

Although it is still in its infancy in Australia, Google Shopping is an opportunity that should not be overlooked.

The reason?

Google’s newly released product search engine targets comparison shoppers and purchase ready consumers alike when they are in the most tantalising stage of the consumer buying cycle – the ‘taking action’ stage!

Furthermore, the ability to extend your product range to relevant Google AdWords ads will allow you to create more magnetic, specific and higher converting ads!

Need to know anything else about Google Shopping? Leave your questions and comments below!

For those who haven’t heard, the New York Times (which is starting to get a reputation for these types of exposés), ran a story outlining how JCPenney had been allegedly engaging in dodgy SEO practices (you can read the full article here) in an attempt to artificially influence Google’s ranking algorithm.

Whilst not illegal, these dodgy SEO practices do go against Google’s policies, and as a result, Google responded by manually penalising JCPenney’s site, causing them to drop from high on the first page for most of their key search terms to somewhere on page six and below.

What JCPenney, or more accurately their SEO firm (who was subsequently dumped by the company), were doing was engaging in extensive paid link schemes on completely unrelated sites. Basically, what they were doing was paying thousands of dodgy or unrelated websites (like a nuclear engineering site and a Bulgarian property site) to link to them, thus artificially increasing their popularity in the eyes of Google.

Now most, if not all SEO firms engage in some form of link-building for their clients. However, this is perfectly fine providing you only get links on related sites or those with high authority themselves. In other words, a genuine reason for one site to link to another. Extensive (and/or paid) link building from what is often referred to in SEO circles as “bad neighbourhoods” is likely to result in Google issuing some harsh penalties for hanging out with the wrong crowd.

The issue for all businesses who are undertaking SEO services is to make sure their SEO firm is not engaging in dodgy or black hat techniques.

What will be interesting to see over the coming months is how long Google impose this ‘manual penalty’ before allowing their algorithm to re-rank JCPenney back where they belong (probably somewhere low on page one or onto page two).

Google have always claimed that their algorithm is very intelligent when it comes to detecting when a site is engaging in dodgy practices, and most ‘penalties’ are handed down algorithmically without the need for manual intervention. So what happened with JCPenney? Why were they able to get away with it for so long before someone noticed?

Cynics have suggested it’s due to the massive AdWords budget JCPenney spend with Google each year, but I don’t believe so. Google have always kept the paid and organic side of their business very separate and there’s also plenty of brands with far bigger budgets than JCPenney that would probably get the preferential treatment (if they were doing it, which I don’t believe they are).

In my opinion, the reason why they were able to get away with it without drawing attention from Google’s algorithm is due to the weighting in Google’s search algorithm regarding the strength of the brand. It’s been rumoured for a while that one of the factors Google uses in assessing a site is how much of a “brand” it is.

This may sound like a hard thing to gauge, but when you have the resources of Google, it’s actually not. For instance, by checking the ‘About Us’ and ‘Contact Us’ pages of a website (and verifying against Google Maps listings, Yellow Pages, other directories, etc), Google’s able to get a picture of how many offices a company has, where they’re located and generally how big a business is.

They’re also able to use social signals like Facebook fans, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, Youtube views to assess the size of a company.

Even other factors, like a company’s Wikipedia page or how many searches occur each month for a ‘brand name’ help Google to assess how big a brand is.

JCPenney would have ticked all these boxes, meaning Google would have had leeway in its algorithm for some dodgy links (either because of others pretending to be affiliated with the brand for their own personal gain or even sabotage by competitors).

The second point is probably the most valid because Google have always said it won’t penalise you for something your competitors could do to you. (Eg: Theoretically, it could have been one of JCPenney’s competitors that planted all those links to deliberately sabotage them).

Now normally, companies engaging in dodgy linking themselves leave a trail. This might be in the form of a link wheel where one of the dodgy linking domains is actually registered to the original company, requests left up on forums for paid links or even ‘honeypot traps’ set by Google where they pose as webmasters of dodgy sites trying to see who approaches them. In any case, if someone involved in dodgy linking has forgot to ‘dot an I’ or ‘cross a T’ somewhere along the way, you can bet Google will find it.

What this suggests is that either the firm engaged in the dodgy linking was covering their tracks perfectly or the few blemishes they did have were being offset by the ‘value of the brand.’ Either way, Google’s algorithm didn’t have enough evidence to punish them.

However, when the story broke and JCPenney fired their SEO firm, it gave Google enough evidence to suggest they had been doing it deliberately and imposed a manual penalty on them.

What this case highlights more than anything is that the world of link-building, whilst necessary to get solid rankings, has a very black underbelly and all businesses need to be careful about which SEO firm they choose to deal with, as picking the ‘wrong’ one can have disastrous consequences online.

For those who haven’t heard, Yahoo and Microsoft agreed last year to a deal whereby Microsoft’s Bing search engine algorithm would power the organic results in Yahoo; and Yahoo’s Search Marketing software would supply paid listings in Bing.

What this means is that, in theory at least, the results in Bing and Yahoo will be identical.

However, I suspect that this won’t be the case in reality.

For one, paid search advertisers may choose not to advertise on one or the other, or have different sets of keywords in different engines, meaning the paid listings will vary.

Why would they do this? Mainly because the demographic makeup of users on the two search engines vary, and so advertisers who know that their target market is more aligned with Bing’s userbase will only advertise there.

However, this difference in demographic usage is also the reason why the two search engines probably won’t spit out the same organic search results.

The deal between Yahoo and Microsoft will see Bing’s search algorithm used on both engines. However, search engine algorithms are made up of thousands of individual factors and one of these is the actual search and click patterns of its users.

Eg: If, for a given keyword, a search engine discovers that the listing at number 3 is proving more popular (i.e. getting clicked on more) than those higher up, it will adjust its search results to reflect this.

Given that different demographics will have different interests and tastes, it holds to reason that the website that attracts them the most in a given list may not be the same one.

Based on that, results in either Bing or Yahoo may start to vary (because of the underlying algorithm) if users of one of those engines are preferring certain sites.

What this means is that you may still see very different sets of results in Bing and Yahoo (and the disparity will probably grow larger over time).

Search engines today are very adamant on why duplicate content should not exist and how fresh, unique and relevant content is better for the user. Duplicate content is frowned upon because it’s a common practice used by black hatters to manipulate the SERPs. However, this is not always the case. Duplicate content can be accidental and not aimed at manipulating the SERPs. Either way, it is  a troublesome issue for search engines such as Google – which is why canonical URLs were introduced.

What is a Canonical URL?

A canonical URL is used to help determine if two or more URLs are the exact same, even if they’re syntactically different from each other. Search engines do possess the intelligence to analyse and conclude whether URL A and URL B are related and/or identical, however they’re unable to be sure whether it’s intentional or not.

Before canonical URLs were introduced and used in the SEO world, it was common practice that if you had duplicate content on URL A and URL B, you would 301 redirect one to the other to prevent any potential duplicate content issues. However, sometimes this isn’t always feasible and content which is on URL A may be duplicated onto URL B, URL C, URL D etc because of a number of factors.

For example:

• Session IDs – In programming, sessions are used to help preserve data for a limited time to each visitor. Every unique visitor will have their own Session ID. However, the problem is created when Google crawls a URL with a Session ID and indexed it as a completely different URL, thus creating duplicate content.

In order to help Google and other search engines determine which in fact, is the source URL, a canonical URL can be placed within the <head></head> section of the website. For example:

• <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.myurl.com.au/index.php” />

This way, whenever Google or another search engine crawls and indexes multiple session IDs, it will be known to them that only 1 URL is the source (real URL).

Another good example which I experience regularly is pages with search results. Let’s say we have a WordPress blog on the following URL:

• http://www.myblog.com.au

We’ve already gone ahead and  filled our blog up with various articles related to Electronics and added categories such as Televisions, Computers, Phones and Cameras. Now when a category is clicked by a user, they’re taken to a page with a list of articles within that category. For example:

• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/

Looking at our list of computer related articles is nice but they’re only excerpts and there is no real information about what we are writing about or what computers are. So, we add 250-300 words of content, briefly describing what computers are and what we’re discussing. However, after a few weeks and over 40 articles added, Google has come along and crawled the computers category and indexing all the page URLs, thus creating duplicate content.

• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/
• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/page1/
• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/page2/
• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/page3/
• http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/page4/

Therefore, to prevent the possibility of duplicate content in this situation, we would add a canonical URL (like our first example) to the computers category within the <head></head> section of our website:

• URL: http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/
• <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.myblog.com.au/category/computers/” />

For more information on Canonical URLs including a list of commonly asked questions, you can visit Google’s webmaster central blog:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

Alternatively, Wikipedia has an article on canonical URLs or more specifically, URL normalisation which includes a list of examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_normalization