After reading through a particularly interesting interview between Matt Cutts and Eric Enge it set me thinking about the relative preference Google places on 301′s vs rel=canonical.
Matt Cutts is clear in this interview that rel=canonical is the lesser of the two options;
Yes, to call [rel=canonical] a poor man’s 301 is not a bad way to think about it. If your web server can do a 301 directly, you can just implement that, but if you don’t have the ability to access the web server or it’s too much trouble to setup a 301, then you can use a rel=canonical.
It’s an interesting suggestion as in real-use cases the 301 is (in my experience) being used as a pure redirect when a page and/or domain has been shifted from one URL to another. The idea that rel=canonical in a page achieves the same result seems to be missing the point of what a 301 is actually being used for.
I’m interested in hearing of any real-world cases where rel=canonical has been used instead of a 301?
