All-in-one-seo - Canonical URLs

[Hazo]

Just thought some people might be interested in something Cheryle picked up on my site the other day.

It seems that in one of the latest updates of the all-in-one-seo plugin it automatically adds an option to change links to make them canonical. This option is auto checked.

Looks like this happened around a month ago, but I'm sure there are plenty of people that didn't realise.

Steve Badger made mention of it in April's post over at poker-seo.com.

I think this change is pretty dodgy actually...

[CK]

This option is auto checked.

Auto checked meaning unless you opt out of it, All in one will automatically add the tag to each of your posts

[Unknown Webmaster]

Could someone please enlighten me on why this is a really bad thing?

[pokerextras]

What's the all in one seo plug in?

[321]

What's dodgy?

Putting a canonical tag is obviously not dodgy since it was invented by the search engines.

(I have no idea what the plugin is though.)

[Ozpoker]

This seems the most obvious explanation
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Specify your canonical

[CK]

The seo plugin allows you to overwrite the basic options that wordpress gives you. You can customize your title tag, and other meta information. I think the problem with this is, and more so for people who don't know its been added is there are a number of people who still blog and post to multiple categories. I checked one site that uses as many categories as it relates to the article. In each category and page it had the canonical link.

So if for example someone has 50% - 100% of their article being displayed not only in the actual article that was intended but the categories and tags would this not cause an issue? The link tag is meant to tell the SE's which url is the real page, so how can you do this properly if multiple pages are declaring that it is the intended url for the content?

Obviously people shouldn't be displaying full or even half of their posts within a tagged or category page but it does happen and frequently. This addon for the wordpress plugin should only have been set to add the link tag to posts only or pages, not every page that wordpress generates

[Hazo]

What's dodgy?

Putting a canonical tag is obviously not dodgy since it was invented by the search engines.

(I have no idea what the plugin is though.)

Dodgy because many people won't realise this option has been slipped in. People say this tag serves no real purpose right? So to the unsuspecting webmaster, they will be caught unaware with a site full of tags that aren't needed.

[321]

Dodgy because many people won't realise this option has been slipped in. People say this tag serves no real purpose right? So to the unsuspecting webmaster, they will be caught unaware with a site full of tags that aren't needed.

I'd say most people who are unaware of it will have canonical problems so it probably will be very good for them.

The tag serves an excellent purpose for webmasters who don't have 301s in place to structure their websites properly, so it is a good default setting. For people who have zero duplicate content, then it isn't needed, but also no harm beyond tiny code bloat.