SEO WebMonkey » Wordpress

rel=canonical: trying to get Google to understand

ndixon — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:49:41 +0000

Back in February, Google announced it had begun supporting the rel=canonical hint in determining the definitive URL for an item of content. This sounds like a one-stop solution to all our duplicate content problems.

For example, my previous post can be reached by the full URL, but also (because of the Wordpress system defaults) via

http://seowebmonkey.com/?p=113

If someone decides to link to my post using that URL, it might therefore also enter the search index in addition to the full version – thus duplicate content.

Placing a rel=canonical instruction in your page’s header can resolve this problem before it occurs. It tells the search engine which URL to use as the definitive (canonical) URL for that page of content, regardless of what was used to get there.

Here’s an example for the above page:

This sits within the section of your page’s html.

This link-tag is supported by Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and Microsoft Live Search.

Does it work?

Google describes its support of rel=canonical as a “hint”. This means it will use the information to determine a canonical URL, but reserves the right to do what it wants when it feels like it. This seems to be a way to cover for errors that slip through the net. Search engines are rarely predictable, and no single method should be trusted in avoiding duplicate content.

For all content management systems in particular, this is an essential addition to the page output. How rapidly Google will change any existing duplicative content URLs that are already in its index is yet to be clearly determined, and this alone will not enable webmasters to explicitly request removal of duplicative URLs via the Google Webmaster Tools interface.

Direct removal of pages from Google’s search index will be covered in my next post.

Jamming the scraper signals

ndixon — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:01:13 +0000

I recently had this issue from my main, personal blog. A less than ethical site (I’m not giving it the benefit of a link) had scraped every word from my RSS feed, and replicated it in a vBulletin forum as individual posts. (Intriguingly, every link in those posts was replaced by a message to register for the forum in order to see the link.)

If you want content, I’ll give you content

This was the first instance of all out scraping I had experienced, so also was the first opportunity to try out a Wordpress plugin that has been collecting dust for some time. Antileech is a plugin by Owen Winkler that replaces the content within your RSS feed – and posts – with a definable or generated message, but only for user-agents or IP addresses you specify.

The plugin adds a small, non-intrusive image to your RSS feed content that enables it to record the location and user-agent of anyone accessing the feed. These user-agents are then listed in the plugin’s settings page, each with a check-box for you to select which ones are to receive the alternative content. The default is to send normal content to all user-agents, so who sees what, is entirely under your control.

The message that counts

Some bloggers choose the default generated message – that encourages anyone reading the alternative content to visit the originating site – while others choose their own messages – some including profanity and obscene/illegal messages to increase the chances of the scraper site being shut down due to inappropriate content. I have chosen a simple message that clearly states the site is stealing content from elsewhere. Most scrapers are automated and once the site owner has set the RSS scraper to work, they rarely look at the incoming content again.

The plugin does not prevent your content from being scraped, of course, and some has to be scraped for you to discover the illegal site in the first place. But once discovered, it offers a very simple and immediate means of ensuring they get no further benefit from future posts from your site. Meanwhile, you can take measures with the site’s hosting company to formally make a complaint to have your stolen content removed.

How to know when you’re being scraped

Another plugin helps to detect scrapers. There are several that do similar jobs, but I choose to use Digital Fingerprint by Kirk Montgomery. This places a user defined string of text at the end of the first paragraph of each post in your RSS feed. Make this string unique and you can create a Google Alert for that particular string. The Alert will let you know whenever and wherever that string turns up. Most will be legitimate syndication, but now and then, you’ll probably discover someone is up to no good.

A never ending battle

Scraper sites (or “splogs”) are never going to be eradicated, and their numbers are growing. Tools like these offer the blogger a viable and effective means to retaliate without losing hours scouring the net or duplicates of their content and struggling to contact those responsible to have the content removed.

Feedwordpress syndication plugin updates

ndixon — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:34:07 +0000

Feedwordpress is one of the ream of RSS aggregators for Wordpress. It enables syndication of other content from multiple RSS feeds into a single blog. I use it to drag posts from this blog, and others, into my main personal blog, thus interconnecting everything into a single “hub”.

What’s changed

Wordpress 2.6 compatibility: a bug that sometimes created multiple post revisions has been fixed.
Admin Interface: now looks and behaves like a WP2.6 interface
Ajax bugs: This one was particularly welcomed. The ajax elements on post write and edit pages failed to operate do to some incompatibility. Now fixed.
Formatting Filters: by default, Feedwordpress protects th original formatting of the source content. Now, we can disable this to allow the local Wordpress to apply whatever formatting and filtering it needs.
Tags: when Feedwordpress syndicates a post that has a category not available in the local blog, you can now elect to have that category created as a tag associated with th post.

There are more changes and additions, detailed at the Feedwordpress home page.

Why Feedwordpress?

Thre are a multitude of plugins available to do a similar job, but Feedwordpress has the edge for one particular function. It enables the additional insertion of Custom Fields to each syndicated post. The type and content of such fields are customisable uniquely for each source RSS feed.

This is useful for customised blog themes, such as this one. The SEO WebMonkey theme pulls details about each post from custom fields, and applies certain content and formatting rules based on those fields (the image associated with most posts, for example). For me the ability to add Custom Field content is hugely useful.

Grab Feedwordpress from the developer’s site, or the Wordpress plugin repository.