Canonical tags and internal Google search
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Quick question: I want some pages that will have canonical tags, to show up in internal results for a Google site search that's built into the site. I'm not finished with the site, but is it correct to assume that pages with canonical will NOT show up in internal site search results, when powered by Google?
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The opposite. Pages designated as canonical are more likely to show up in results. Here is the Google answer regarding Rel Canonical: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
Basically canonical tags say to Google "If you find multiple copies of this page, use this version." Note that duplicate content can refer to the page both on and not on the www subdomain, for example:
http://mydomain.com/mypage.html
http://www.mydomain.com/mypage.html
Can be confused by some crawler bots, so using rel canonical everywhere is generally considered a best practice to avoid these situations.
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Of note, you can also customize your built-in internal Google site search: http://www.google.com/sitesearch/
"Customize search box and results using XML"