[SEO] Duplication
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- Dominant language
- Nix
- Stars
- 4k
- Forks
- 339
- Avg merge
- 2d 11h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 7
Description
Observations
The Nix manual allows .html extensions.
https://nix.dev/manual/nix/2.23/language/derivations
https://nix.dev/manual/nix/2.23/language/derivations.html
This means that all pages are duplicated.
Even more duplication exists between versions.
Problem
Duplicate pages are bad for search engine optimization (SEO).
Approaches
Add redirects, e.g. from x.html to x. HTTP resources don't need file extensions and should not have them.
HTML is not a relevant keyword, so it should not appear in our URLs.
Another option is to add headers or meta tags that tell crawlers which page is the canonical page, but this would be over-engineered for this problem. This would be over-engineered for .html, but afaik it's the only option for telling crawlers where to find the latest and not punish us in their rankings.
Willing to help?
Yes.
Priorities
Add 👍 to issues you find important.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by comparing the two derivations URLs cited in the issue and reviewing how versioned manual pages are served. Determine the redirect or canonicalization behavior needed for both .html variants and older versions; done means duplicate URLs no longer compete in search results.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- documentation
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100