Set Canonical URL of RSS Feeds to Feed URL?

[CivilWarTalk]

I use the Registered Feeds tool in XF to populate a blog and news forum, and that's worked nicely for years, but I'm worried that I may be getting penalized for duplicate content.

I'm wondering if there is a way to adjust my site to avoid the penalty, so I wanted to ask if this was an appropriate solution:

Right now XF sets a canonical address in the header of every thread to point to itself, which would be fine for normal threads, but for RSS feeds would it be better to set that URL to the feed supplied URL for the supplied content?

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding the point of the canonical tag, can someone explain this?

 

[Jake Bunce]

That may be possible with an addon. Check your xf_feed_log table. It records the thread_id of the feed item. In addition, many feeds use the item URL for the unique_id. If your xf_feed_log records have both of those things then you can create a map from thread_id to item URL with an addon.

 

[CivilWarTalk]

It's good to know that it's possible that it could be done, although coding an addon may be above my head.

I'm just not convinced it's the right decision.

I'm also considering dropping use of the RSS feeder altogether, and maybe using something less.... duplicate content creating.... I guess I need an SEO consultation.... I've done this for 5 years with vB and now XF, but I worry it impacts my rankings. I don't like making changes.....