URL Canonicalization Rules from Matt Cutts

Hi folks,

This question has floated back up to the top of the pile again, so I will cover it again. A question I get asked by students and users on a regular basis is how they should pick a URL for for their home page, and what does it really mean when they finally decide on a method.

For example, here are the possible URL’s you might use when describing your homepage:

- www.yoursite.com
- yoursite.com
- www.yoursite.com/index.html
- yoursite.com/home.asp

The question is how do you get Google to choose the link that represents your home page?

Matt Cutt’s describes the first way as making sure your internal links resolve consistently to the same choice (listed above) every time. This shows a consistent use of one method, and it will become the choice for your indexing. Don’t be inconsistent with the internal linking pointing to other pages in your site. If you decide that you want your site to be www.yoursite.com, make sure that you use this absolute link every time you link internally. If you have any automatic internal linking software, make sure it is set to use the link method you have decided on. I like to use absolute paths.

Matt Cutt’s was asked this question, and he gave great advice on several other things that can be done:

Matt: Suppose you want your default url to be http://www.example.com/ . You can make your webserver so that if someone requests http://example.com/, it does a 301 (permanent) redirect to http://www.example.com/ . That helps Google know which url you prefer to be canonical. Adding a 301 redirect can be an especially good idea if your site changes often (e.g. dynamic content, a blog, etc.).

If you would like to get deeper into Geek Speak on this topic, please visit Matt Cutt’s blog on the topic of canonicalization and server redirects. It is an article worth bookmarking.

Russell Wright and the Theme Zoom Team

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