There may be instance when you want to track the source of a request, and a common way of doing so is by using tracking parameters in URLs. Unfortunately, implementing referrer tracking in this way can result in significant issues with search engines. In particular, it can cause duplicate content issues (since the search engine bot finds multiple valid URLs that point to the same page) and ranking issues (since all the links to the page aren't to the same URL).. [More]

Controlling what content is blocked from being found in search engines is crucial for many websites. Fortunately, the major search engines and other well-behaved robots observe the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), which has evolved organically since the early 1990's to provide a set of controls over what parts of a web site search engines robots can crawl and index.. [More]

A picture is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, when it comes to major search engines, which are still text-based, a picture is worth a lot of blank space. Does this mean you shouldn't use images on your site if you want to rank in search? Not at all. Just keep some simple tips in mind when adding those images to your pages. As a bonus, these tips help not only with seach engine robots, but with Jane as well! You want your site to be accessible in screen readers, to those who have images turned off in their browsers, and to those who have slow connections or are on mobile browsers and may have trouble loading images. By providing search engine robots with textual information about the images on your site, your site can benefit not only from better placement in web search results, but in image search results as well. Image Seach can provide substantial search traffic, so don't overlook this as an acquisition channel.. [More]

Canonicalization is more than just a funny word, it's a common issue in web development when multiple URLs point to the same page and a search engine is unable to determine which one is the true (or canonical) URL. The impact is a potentially significantly lower PageRank for key pages on your site. This article provides guidance for solving domain canonicalization issues, and shows you how to check if website is affected by the problem.. [More]