Should Google use rel=alternate on insights?
I use Google Insights quite a lot and I think that the data you can extract from it, in its most basic form, is the first obvious step to keyword discovery if you embark on a new SEO project. Looking in the SERPs today, I noticed that Google.co.uk now has a version of insights, which is identical to Google.com.
I checked the backend code to look for a canonical tag and more importantly a rel=alternate tag. Both were not present, so I ask the question – why isn’t Google using the tag on their own products but are recommending webmasters use it on multi lingual and multi regional websites?
Doing a search for insights, I now receive two options in the SERPs, both providing the same information:
Wouldn’t the correct setup be:
- Place a canonical tag on Google.co.uk pointing to Google.com
- Include a rel=alternate set on both pages
- Mark up the set as US:en-us and UK:en-gb
This in turn will allow Google to consolidate to one domain, whilst providing alternative content for another audience.
Hey mate … what a silly question … Google is Google and unless they don’t do biggest mistakes like buying links (for Chrome) they won’t penalize themselves.
They are such a big organization that they barely talk each other.
So don’t take your breath while they fix this