Google announced that it now offering cross-domain support of the rel="canonical" link element. If you are unfamiliar with this link element, Google’s Matt Cutts discussed it with us here. Basically, it’s a way to avoid duplicate content issues, but until now, you couldn’t use it across domains.

Google’s Matt Cutts continues to post helpful videos at Google’s Webmaster Central YouTube channel, in which he answers user questions. The latest question he tackles comes from a guy in Chicago who asks:

Does the new canonicalization tag make it safe to add tracking arguments to some of my internal links without fear that Google will split the quality signals between the two addresses?

Matt Cutts is getting in the habit of posting helpful videos along with accompanying slideshows. He has continued this tradition today with one of each on the recently announced Canonical Link element introduced jointly among Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (Cutts notes that Ask has gotten on board as well).