Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft are fierce rivals, but when it comes to a better cause, they never hesitate to collaborate with each other!

Recently, the giants came out with their individual statements that they will support a new Web standard so that all the Web publishers out there can remove duplicate pages from their Web sites. The top three search engines are implementing support for the new HTML tag – “<link>”. In an effort to clean the web, this collaboration will allow all the search engines to find and index more Web pages, making their search results more comprehensive. It's “Canonical Tag.”

“We are happy that everyone is going to support the same implementation,” said Nathan Buggia, a lead program manager at Microsoft. “This is a clear benefit for publishers as it gives them an opportunity to get more exposure through search engines.”

To implement Canonical URL form on website, you have to add the following link tag at head section of the site’s HTML.

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/products” />

For instance, with these URLs:

http://www.example.com/products?trackingid=feed

http://www.example.com/products?sessionid=hgjkeor2

http://www.example.com/products?printable=yes&trackingid=footer

“There is a lot of clutter on the Web and with this, publishers will be able to clean up a lot of junk,” said Matt Cutts. “I think it is going to gain traction pretty quickly, he further added”

This new tag won’t completely solve duplicate issues but at least “something is better than nothing.”