Canonical doesn’t work for Baidu, Try rel=”index”
Google has introduced the canonical attribute to SEOs and webmasters for a while. And the attribute is very useful as an alternative way to 301 redirection.
But for Baidu, the canonical attribute is still unrecognized.
so what to do with Baidu?
We can use the attribute of rel=”index” to let Baidu know which is our main domain.
What is this?
According to W3C, this attribute “refers to a document providing an index for the current document.”
Successful case:
A friend of mine met the issue that both the www and non www domains are indexed by Baidu. For some technical reason, he was unable to direct one to another, to concentrate the domain weight.
So he tried the canonical attribute first, but as expected, it didn’t work. Both of the two domains were still being ranked. Later I told him to try the rel=”index” attribute instead. I wasn’t so sure either because this attribute is not very common outside WordPress blogs. The good news was, it worked, 
Baidu removed the unnecessarily indexed page and kept only the preferred one.
Related posts:
- Use Baidu Index for Chinese Keyword Research
- Are .CN Domains Better for Baidu or Chinese SEO?
- Some questions and answers from Baidu Webmaster Club
- Baidu SEO and 301 Redirect
- Baidu and nofollow
- 4 Ways to Leverage Baidu Zhidao
Date: April 21st | Topic: Google Stuff | Author: David
This is interesting, David,
If the red=”index” attribute works, have you tried the “base” attribute for Baidu.
It is a pity to know that Baidu doesn’t recognize the canonical attribute though.
I also read another article on this blog about if Baidu supports nofollow, which according to your experiment, it didn’t. Have you done any followup test to check it again?
Thank you for all the great information here on this blog.
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it