As many readers will know, articles in Joomla 1.5 display by default a link to a PDF version. This leads to similar URLs such as:
domain.com/article.html
domain.com/article.pdf
Although the file extension is different, Google doesn’t know which URL is the main one and penalizes your site for duplicate content.
To address this issue, Google recently announced a new web search feature that allows programmers to specify a main URL when a non-HTML file is requested.
You can now transparently include a link to the main URL when accessing a PDF or another non-HTML file and Google will know to index only the main URL. In other words, Google will listen if you tell it to stop snooping around for URLs for the PDF buttons.
We keep a very close eye on new Google developments and I am happy to report that just 13 days after the Google announcement we released sh404SEF® 2.2.7 that leverages this new feature.
Regular updates and new features have become the status quo for sh404SEF® and we encourage all our subscribers to download and install the latest version to get all of the available SEO benefits as every little bit helps!
If you are a legacy sh404SEF® user, this new feature is just one of the many benefits you will experience once you purchase your first risk-free subscription and upgrade.
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