Canonical tags and Syndicated Content
-
-
Good point. If a new domain is able to rank as well as the old site before the 301 redirects are put in place, that's very compelling evidence.
-
I agree with Kurt - in lieu of de-listing or redirects, rel=canonical is about your only option. It's possible it won't be enough, but it's the best you've got by a long shot, given the restrictions.
-
I haven't seen all the numbers, but I know people at major newspapers using cross-domain canonical, and they'd drop it in a heartbeat if it didn't pass the majority of link equity.
I think the domain move case is more compelling, because now you've got a completely new domain that you can show ranking in place of the old, stronger domain, without redirects in place. At that point, it's unlikely just a fluke.
-
Cool. I hadn't heard of using canonical tags to move sites. That's quite helpful.
I'm curious about the idea that the canonical tag passes link authority or PageRank. Is it possible that these tests people have done just look like that's what's happening? Here's what I mean. Let's say I write an article that gets reproduced on another site and Google is ranking the other site in the top ten for some keyword. Then I get the other site to put a canonical tag on their page and in a few days my site is ranking for that keyword. Now, does that indicate that any link authority was passed or does it indicate that Google would have ranked either site in the top ten for that keyword, but they had to decide on one or the other because they are duplicate. So, the canonical tag just caused Google to change it's mind about which site it would rank. In other words, could it be that both pages are authoritative enough to rank and the canonical tag is just telling Google which of the two should rank?
Has anyone done tests where one site had content for a while that didn't rank and then another more authoritative site re-published the content and ranked for it and then the authoritative site put a canonical tag to the original site and now that original site was able to rank well for the keyword? And when they did this, they would have to not have put a link to the original content only using the canonical.
-
Dave,
What you're describing is exactly what the canonical tag is for, reproducing content on pages, but giving credit to the original. Anyway, if 301's wouldn't work, what else would you do?
-
She essentially said that canonicals for moving a site was one of the intended uses. In her talk she gave the example of having an Exercise Blog and taking over Matt Cutts' Exercise blog... and how in that instance canonicals are a good way to notify the search engines that you would like your main site to start ranking for the instances where the secondary site would come up. (Plus the bits about good for the user experience) Then you would canonical all relevant pages as necessary, move any content that you would like to appear on the main site, and throw up a message on the secondary site with a link stating you're moving to the new URL. Then after a while you would 301 everything over.
I have actually given that advice to people regularly and (so far) no one has come back screaming at me that I ruined their site.
-
That actually makes much more sense than the way I've had people try to explain it to me
I didn't realize a Googler had actually condoned it (although sometimes I find Maile's messages a bit mixed).
-
I have done these and I agree completely.
Also, the bit about Canonicals to move a site and then 301 later was actually talked about at SMX by Maile Ohye of Google as a legitimate and good use for situations such as buying or taking over someone else's site as a means to pass link equity while also giving users a better experience by letting them know you are transitioning... giving them time to change their bookmarks instead of potentially causing them to bounce by sending them somewhere they didn't intend to go.
(though don't quote me on her saying anything about "link juice" or "link equity" specifically... it was about a year ago and its been ages since I've listened to my personal recordings of the session [and actually, i'm not sure I was even actually allowed to record while Google and Bing reps were speaking... but oh well])
-
So, I can tell you from conversations with SEOs that some have used rel=canonical successfully to pass link-juice. In some cases, I even know people who use it to move sites, and then 301 later, and claim success with this method. Unfortunately, almost none of those case studies are published.
Generally speaking, I still don't think it's a great way to move a resource, and tend toward 301s for that purpose, but all the data I've seen suggests that rel=canonical tends to consolidate link juice. There are exceptions, of course, such as when Google doesn't honor the tag (they don't see it as a duplicate, for example, and think you're trying to game the system), but that's true of 301s as well.
Rand did a Whiteboard Friday a couple of years ago talking about link-equity and cross-domain canonical:
http://moz.com/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday
I know he's actually a big believer that rel=canonical passes link equity, as or more strongly in some cases than 301-redirects (again, it's pretty situational).
-
My understanding is that canonical tag only establishes the original location of content. It has nothing to do with PageRank. I've not seen anything from Google that would indicate that adding a canonical tag to a page will pass all it's authority to the canonical URL.
-
Hiya,I wouldn't look at it as a link juice argument as its really aimed at telling the search engine which concepts the original (which can be helpful if e.g you have multiple products etc.). What it can do is help build you up as an authority. Regards to auther credit it depends if they used the rel="author" tag (telling Google who the auther is).
Look at it another way you would use the tags for duplicate content, do you think a search engine would highly rank duplicate content? It would link one copy of the relevant result and you can use the tag to tell it "this is the original content" (i.e the most relevant).
You may find the following helpful : https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394
as well a similar topic was posted only an hour ago http://moz.com/community/q/canonical-tag-refers-to-itself
I hope this has helped a bit for your question, good luck!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved Duplicate Content
We have multiple collections being flagged as duplicate content - but I can't find where these duplications are coming from? The duplicate content has no introductory text, and no meta description. Please see examples:- This is the correct collection page:-
Technical SEO | | Caroline_Ardmoor
https://www.ardmoor.co.uk/collections/deerhunter This is the incorrect collection page:-
https://www.ardmoor.co.uk/collections/vendors How do I stop this incorrect page from showing?0 -
Hreflang tag implementation
Hi Mozzers, For an international client, we want to install hreflang tags for 3 different languages for their website in Belgium: dutch, french and english. The dutch version (nl-be) and the french version (fr-be) can perfectly be installed, but our developer has troubles implementing the english version (en-be). According to ISO 639-1 , "en-be" is apparently not supported. Unfortunately, we can't generalize the hreflang tags (), because our client has different websites in each country, so we need to specifically target Belgium here. Does anyone have a solution? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
Is there an percentage of duplicate content required before you should use a canonical tag?
Is there a percentage (approximate or exact) of duplicate content you should have before you use a canonical tag? Similarly how does Google handle canonical tags if the pages aren’t 100% duplicate? I've added some background and an example below; Nike Trainer model 1 – has an overview page that also links to a sub-page about cushioning, one about Gore-Tex and one about breathability. Nike Trainer model 2,3,4,5 – have an overview page that also links to sub-pages page about cushioning , Gore-Tex and breathability. In each of the sub-pages the URL is a child of the parent so a distinct page from each other e.g. /nike-trainer/model-1/gore-tex /nike-trainer/model-2/gore-tex. There is some differences in material composition, some different images and of course the product name is referred multiple times. This makes the page in the region of 80% unique.
Technical SEO | | punchseo0 -
Is the content on my website is garbage?
I received a mail from google webmasters, that my website is having low quality content. Website - nowwhatmoments.com
Technical SEO | | Green.landon0 -
How different does content need to be to avoid a duplicate content penalty?
I'm implementing landing pages that are optimized for specific keywords. Some of them are substantially the same as another page (perhaps 10-15 words different). Are the landing pages likely to be identified by search engines as duplicate content? How different do two pages need to be to avoid the duplicate penalty?
Technical SEO | | WayneBlankenbeckler0 -
How to protect against duplicate content?
I just discovered that my company's 'dev website' (which mirrors our actual website, but which is where we add content before we put new content to our actual website) is being indexed by Google. My first thought is that I should add a rel=canonical tag to the actual website, so that Google knows that this duplicate content from the dev site is to be ignored. Is that the right move? Are there other things I should do? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | williammarlow0 -
Rel-canonical tag
Hi, I'm having some confusion with the rel-canonical tag. A few months ago we implemented the rel-canonical tag because we had many errors specifically duplicate page content come upon the SEOmoz web app (mostly because we use tracking code). I had asked what to do about this and was advised by the SEOmoz web app to implement the rel-canonical tag. However, when I'm working on the Keyword Optimizer Tool, it always checks off that I'm using the rel-canonical tag improperly, and then when I go into our sites' CMS for that page and uncheck "Use Canonical URL", the keyword optimizer tool up's my grade for that correction/that I've made an improvement. So my question is if the page I'm working on is the one I want search engines to find, should I not be using the Canonical URL tag? Should the Canonical URL tag only be used on URL's with the tracking code?
Technical SEO | | aircyclemegan0 -
Duplicate content
I am getting flagged for duplicate content, SEOmoz is flagging the following as duplicate: www.adgenerator.co.uk/ www.adgenerator.co.uk/index.asp These are obviously meant to be the same path so what measures do I take to let the SE's know that these are to be considered the same page. I have used the canonical meta tag on the Index.asp page.
Technical SEO | | IPIM0