Since the arrival of WordPress 2.9, the “canonical” element is automatically generated in your website’s header. While it is an excellent way to tell some search engines not to index certain pages (lets presume for a second that search engines really listen ), there some instances you my not necessarily want the “canonical” element generated on your website. Instead of helping your SEO efforts, the canonical element may actually hurt your website.

If you use Datafeedr Plugin with current (or 2.9+) version of WordPress, you might need to consider doing some tweaking to your WordPress installation. Why? Because every “product page” on your website has canonical link element in the header pointing to your “store page”. What does it mean? Well, it is like asking search engines not to index your “product pages”.

So how do you tell your WordPress not to generate canonical link element in the header?
One way you can do it is by modifying your theme’s functions.php file – this method however did not work on my WordPress 3.0 installations.

Another way you can disable canonical element is by modifying your “wp-includes/default-filters.php” file. All you need to do is to find the line 197 that says:

add_action( 'wp_head', 'rel_canonical' );

and change it to:

//add_action( 'wp_head', 'rel_canonical' );

You can delete that line entirely if you wish. But you need to do this every time you are upgrading/reinstlling your WordPress.
_________
What is Datafeedr??? Datafeedr is a nifty WordPress plugn that allows you to create an affiliate website featuring thousands of product in minutes. Click Here To Learn More About Datafeedr!

Over the last few years I have tried several different solutions that allowed me to create affiliate websites featuring thousands of products from my merchants. Two of my favorites so far were a) WordPress Datafeed Import Script – a script for WordPress that allowing you to import merchants datafeeds creating a blog post for each product and b)AffiliSotre- a stand alone script that also allowed you to easy create affiliate websites using datafeeds from your affiliate networks and merchants.

One of the big tasks associate with both above mentioned scripts was the preparation and cleanup of datafeeds before adding them to your websites, since every network has their own way of formating their datafeeds. Needless to say when I came across Datafeedr- I was sold immediately.

If you are inexperience programmer like myself, Datafeedr maybe the way to go. It does however require some basic knowledge of WordPress and it is not free, but good folks at Datafeedr are rather confident about their products and offer a 30 days money back guarantee.

Since the Datafeedr is the most expensive solution I have used so far. I will spend considerable amount of time writing about my experience with this plugin, it’s features and even their affiliate program. While I am immensely impressed with some Datafeedr features, there are few features I would like to see improved or added.

If you would like to read more about my experience with Datafeedr- make sure to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter.