Is there a reason to put a canonical to yourself? Interesting case...

[BeytzNet]

Hi,

I was looking at BlueNile (biggest diamonds online dealer in the world) since I was wondering how they dealt with similar products and with sold products.

Each diamond that is sold is unique. Once it is sold it is unavailable for sale.

Also, all diamonds are VERY similar so they should also find a way to handle duplication in content.

Look at the following 2 pages:

http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02360835

http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02366155

The pages are practically identical and in the "view source" I noticed that they add a canonical tag to themselves...

Any thoughts on that?

Thanks

[AlanMosley]

Its not the correct use of a canonical, but some people do it so if they get their content copied the canonical will point back to teh original.

Bing does not like it, they say of you do this on every page they will ignore them along with any canonicals that may be of importance

http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/10/06/managing-redirects-301s-302s-and-canonicals.aspx