Canonical tags and Syndicated Content

[EvolveCreative]

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

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.

[Dr-Pete]

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.

[Dr-Pete]

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.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

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.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

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?

[MikeRoberts]

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.

[Dr-Pete]

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).

[MikeRoberts]

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])

[Dr-Pete]

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).

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

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.

[GPainter]

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!