More than a year since the three major search engines united to announce the canonical tag, neither Bing nor Yahoo formally support it. But that could be changing soon.
Speaking during the “Ask the Search Engines” session at SMX West on Thursday, reps from both search engines said they’re in the process of supporting rel=canonical right now.
Bing’s Sasi Parthasarathy told attendees that canonical tag support should be in place by the end of March or early April. Arnab Bhattacharjee of Yahoo said they’re currently rolling out support of the tag, but cautioned that Yahoo will only use it “as a hint” regarding a web page’s original/primary URL.
Back in October, Google went a step further and announced its support of the canonical tag across different domains. On Thursday, Parthasarathy said Bing has no current plans to follow suit, while Bhattacharjee said Yahoo is exploring the possibility of cross-domain canonical tag support.
Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content | Yahoo: SEO
“as a hint”? WHY? Just support it or not. Jeeez we are trying to make their lives easier by using this stuff right?
What are everyone’s thought’s on the Yahoo Bing merger? I know in recent months Bing has slowly gained market share (4% increase from last month according to hitwise) at the expense of Google but are these two companies innovative enough to not only keep up but overtake Google on some search platforms? I would love to hear some experienced SEO professional’s opinions on this.