Duplicate content on subdomains

[NewspaperArchive]

Hi All,

The structure of the main website goes by http://abc.com/state/city/publication - We have a partnership with public libraries to give local users access to the publication content for free. We have over 100 subdomains (each for an specific library) that have duplicate content issues with the root domain, Most subdomains have very high page authority (the main public library and other local .gov websites have links to this subdomains).Currently this subdomains are not index due to the robots text file excluding bots from crawling. I am in the process of setting canonical tags on each subdomain and open the robots text file. Should I set the canonical tag on each subdomain (homepage) to the root domain version or to the specific city within the root domain?

Example 1:
Option 1: http://covina.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/california/covina/
Option 2: http://covina.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/

Example 2:
Option 1: http://galveston.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/texas/galveston/
Option 2: http://galveston.abc.com = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/

Example 3:
Option 1: http://hutchnews.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/kansas/hutchinson/
Option 2: http://hutchnews.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/

I believe it makes more sense to set the canonical tag to the corresponding city (option 1), but wondering if setting the canonical tag to the root domain will pass "some link juice" to the root domain and it will be more beneficial.

Thanks!

[NewspaperArchive]

Thanks Andy, makes sense.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Deborah,

I would be tempted to steer clear of option 2 and do what makes sense to Google (and visitors) and set the canonical tag to the city pages. You would only get the same amount of link juice passing for a canonical as you would for a 301, but this probably wouldn't make an awful lot of difference.

Option 1 is the logical implementation.

-Andy