Issue 184 in svnbook: Use <link rel="canonical" ...> to prioritize newer book versions in Web search results.

[svnbook at googlecode.com]

Status: New
Owner: ----
Labels: Type-Enhancement Priority-Medium Milestone-whenever

New issue 184 by cmpilato: Use <link rel="canonical" ...> to prioritize  
newer book versions in Web search results.
http://code.google.com/p/svnbook/issues/detail?id=184

Daniel Shahaf forwarded along the neat suggestion to embed <link  
rel="canonical" ...> tags in the book's HTML pages in order to prioritize  
newer book versions in Web search results.

{{{
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:56:07 +0200
From: Daniel Shahaf <d.s at daniel.shahaf.name>
To: svnbook-dev at red-bean.com
Subject: search results and book versions  was: Re: [proposed] remove  
docs/1.3/
Message-ID: <20120228175254.GA6055 at daniel3.local>

> >> <link rel="canonical" href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/"/>
> ..
> For example, searching Google for "rewriterule" has long given the 1.3
> Rewrite Guide, but within 24 hours of adding a rel canonical tag, it
> started pointing to the 2.2 mod_rewrite docs as the top hit.

Something to consider doing for the 1.6-and-earlier versions of the book?

Daniel
(spotted that on dev at httpd)
}}}

In my response, I thought it would be valuable even for the youngest  
version of the book so that forks thereof that spring up around the Web  
would point to the canonical location.  I may have been too hasty, though,  
as I *think* I just read that this tag only works (as in, is recognized and  
handled as expected) when the source and canonical target are on the same  
server.