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Google now officially supports the use of the rel=canonical attribute within HTTP Headers.
In 2009, Google, Yahoo and Bing introduced the canonical tag as a way to allow webmasters to do 301 redirects without physically redirecting humans. A few months later, Ian Macfarlane tweeted asking for a method to do this over the X-robots protocol.
That is what this does - in a sense.
Since you cannot stick a rel=canonical attribute within a PDF, DOC or other file formats, outside of an HTML page - you can use the rel=canonical within the HTTP header to communicate the redirect.
Webmasters are cautiously concerned about the tag - but I honestly think it will be used well for the most part.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Sphinn.
Comments:
Perez_marc
06/20/2011 11:30 pm
How do you implement it into an HTTP header?
Alex
06/28/2011 11:53 pm
Hi, Can you give me an example of how I can implement it into an HTTP header ? Do I have to put the code below into my home page? Thanks in advance
Barry Schwartz
06/28/2011 11:55 pm
It's done via server response code.
Alex
06/29/2011 12:20 am
Thank you Barry for your answer. Can you precise me if I can use the code given by Google as example http://goo.gl/AEDQZ ? If yes, where have I to put this code, in my home page, in .htaccess file ? Thank you
Barry Schwartz
06/29/2011 12:24 am
Can't do it now, but check the google faqs and support forums. Linked to them in the post.
Alex
06/29/2011 12:25 am
Ok. Thank you for the advice
Kevin
07/13/2011 01:52 pm
Alex, I couldn't find any great guides either, so I wrote a tutorial on how to set these headers using httaccess. http://makeitrank.com/how-to-set-http-header-canonical-links
Alexandre Penyauski
07/13/2011 01:58 pm
Thank you very much. I'l tweet your guide