Duplicate Content Owners Catch a New Break from Google

Google announced that it now offering cross-domain support of the rel="canonical" link element. If you are unfamiliar with this link element, Google's Matt Cutts discussed it with us here . Basically, it's a way to avoid duplicate content issues, but until now, you couldn't use it across domains. "For some sites, there are legitimate reasons to [have] duplicate content across different websites — for instance, to migrate to a new domain name using a web server that cannot create server-side redirects," says John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst with Google Z