Cross-Domain Canonical Showing as inbound links?

[stevenmusumeche]

I run several ecommerce websites, and there is some overlap in the products offered between sites.  To solve this duplicate content issue, I use a cross-domain rel canonical so that there is only 1 authoritative page per product, even if it is sold on multiple sites.

However, I am noticing that my inbound link profile is massively expanding because Google sees these as inbound links.  The top linking domains for my site are all owned by me, even though there are not any actual links between the sites.

Has anyone else experienced this?

[randfish]

I actually like it - think it makes sense for what you're describing, and I don't think I'd change it. The other option might be a 301 redirect or simply linking to only one site, but then you'd be changing branding/domain and possibly losing the customer.

[stevenmusumeche]

Hey Rand, thanks for the info.  I did notice that OSE is counting them as links as well.  Do you think this is an issue in my scenario?  Would I be better off no-indexing the "duplicate" product pages on the non-primary sites?

As a fake example, imagine I sell sewing machines on one site, arts and crafts on another.  There is some overlap in products between these two industries, so it makes sense to show (as an example) yarn on both sites.  However since the product pages are the same, you would want to avoid duplicate content being indexed.  Do you think rel canonical or noindex is a better solution?

[randfish]

Yeah - I've seen it to (only had a single site cross-domaining). We're actually working to count these as links in OSE/Mozscape, because that appears to be how Google treats them. My guess is that they're actually more powerful than just a link (probably pass 90-95% of a page's link juice type metrics vs. some small fraction for an individual link), but in many other ways, very similar.