Hi Amy,

Some time ago when the Canonical Link first started getting used I wrote some notes about using it with Convio PageBuilder, I'll copy them below as follows. I haven't researched into it much recently but I hope this info is helpful.

-0.25in;">· Google: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

· Yahoo: http://ysearchblog.com/2009/02/12/fighting-duplication-adding-more-arrows-to-your-quiver/

· Microsoft: http://blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/archive/2009/02/12/partnering-to-help-solve-duplicate-content-issues.aspx

Brian Mucha:

So what about the implications of this as it relates to the missing 301 redirects on Convio?

See http://community.customer.convio.com/message/9026#9026

I haven't found anything that mentions how the SEs deal with a 302 redirect AND this link. Better? No effect? Worse?

It seems to me that a 302 with the canonlical link is functionally the same as a 301, so long as the link overrides any 302 penalty we are getting.

Regards, B

Another Reference: The WikiPedia link on URL Normalization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_normalization

Be very careful with rel="canonical"

You do need to canonize your pages (especially with Convio's very broken PageBuilder redirect system), but you must do it right, or you will literally disappear from google overnight.

From first-hand experience, you need to use Corey's "content folder directory" taxonomy; it's the shortest, least confusing and least dynamic-looking method available.

Whatever you do, DON'T use the shortcut method. PB shortcuts use a 302 redirect to your final page, and Google gets really mad when you canonize a page that is immediately redirected.

So, yeah. Look forward to going page-by-page to update your headers – you are about to get intimately aquainted with how often Convio's servers hit rough patches. If you have a site with some 100 pages, it may take you a good 10 hours.

For what it's worth, I've chased down a good majority of what's available in terms of fixing Convio SEO issues. If you're looking for a hired gun, give me a ring at 260-469-3090.

Brian Mucha:

Can you give me a little more insight as to your preference for the folder taxonomy preference?

I inherited our sites about a year ago, and it uses "PageServer?pagename=" links all over the place. That method still seems safest to me and I've continued it, as it is possible to move PB pages to other folders, which would break both the navigation and rel="canonical" links.

"...you are about to get intimately aquainted with how often Convio's servers hit rough patches..."

Oh good, it has all gone so smoothly up until now.

Regards, Brian

PS - Thanks for the number, I'll certainly keep it handy.

Sure. At the end of the day, we want the most intuitive, easy-to-remember, human-readable URL. When we start throwing in special characters, two things happen:

1. It's harder to remember. Your brain starts, "Now was it page=? or ?pageserver= or &page=server... oh well, I give up." Try this: do a Google search, and take a look at the result page URL. It's like staring into the mouth of madness.
   
2. Search engines don't know whether your page is really a page. Special characters are a sign that there's been a variable passed along to the page, so that it can do something dynamic and on-the-fly. So, the search engine has to decide, "Is this a temporary change?"
   

Now, to be fair, Google has gotten better and better at figuring out whether or not the variable in the url is important or not.They even offer a webmaster tool that will let you explicitly tell the SE what to ignore. That said, the other big two engines always lag behind, and besides, we don't want search engines making decisions at all.

So, what to do, what to do?

Convio will resolve pages in one of three ways... there's the dynamic route (example.com/site/PageServer?pagename=yourpagehere), there's the redirection route (example.com/yourpagehere), and the static route – what he called the "folder" method – (example.com/site/PageNavigator/yourpagehere). Don't get hung up on the word "folder" there, you can use the method without making any folders.

Right off the bat, DO NOT USE THE REDIRECT METHOD. It 302's, so it's effort down the toilet. That leaves dynamic and static methods. Convio created the static method specifically to allow you to group pages into folders, but they accidentally created the best method for taxonomy as a side effect. That said, you don't have to actually use folders to take advantage of the method. Just make your pagename follow after /site/PageNavigator/ and it will work. It's still dumb to need those extra two words, but the method is preferred because it results in a 200 (found) code, it doesn't redirect, and it's moderately human-readable.

Do you need to go back and get everyone to relink to the site/PageNavigator/ method instead of the ?pagename= method? No (though it wouldn't hurt). Just canonize it that way, and start using that taxonomy going forward. Then, as you have time, change the internal links on your site to reflect the canonical taxonomy. I don't have any hard data saying that you will improve SEO by making all of your links match, but I'm roughly 90% sure it will have an effect. Google likes to see consistency.

Even if you don't update a single dynamic link to a static one, canonizing and building the better-looking links will impact your spidering for the better.