Cross-Domain Canonical and duplicate content
-
Hi Mozfans!
I'm working on seo for one of my new clients and it's a job site (i call the site: Site A).
The thing is that the client has about 3 sites with the same Jobs on it.I'm pointing a duplicate content problem, only the thing is the jobs on the other sites must stay there. So the client doesn't want to remove them. There is a other (non ranking) reason why.
Can i solve the duplicate content problem with a cross-domain canonical?
The client wants to rank well with the site i'm working on (Site A).Thanks!
Rand did a whiteboard friday about Cross-Domain Canonical
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday -
Every document I have seen all agrees that canonical tags are followed when the tag is used appropriately.
The tag could be misused either intentionally or unintentionally in which case it would not be honored. The tag is meant to connect pages which offer identical information, very similar information, or the same information presented in a different format such as a modified sort order, or a print version. I have never seen nor even heard of an instance where a properly used canonical tag was not respected by Google or Bing.
-
Thanks Ryan, I didn't noticed that about the reply sequencing, and you're right, I read them in the wrong order. It makes much more sense now.
By "some" support, I meant that even Google via Matt Cutts says that they don't take cross domain canonical as "a directive" but rather a "hint" (and even that assumes Google agrees with you, that your pages are duplicates).
So the magic question is how how much authority do Bing and Google give the rel="canonical" and is it similar between the two engines?
-
One aspect of the SEOmoz Q&A structure I dislike is the ordering of responses. Rather then maintaining a timeline order, the responses are re-ordered based on other factors such as "thumbs-up" and staff endorsements. I understand the concept that replies which are liked more are probably more helpful and should be seen first, but it causes confusion such as in this case.
Dr. Pete's response on the Bing cross-canonical topic appears first, but it was offered second-to-last chronologically speaking. We originally agreed there was not evidence indicating Bing supported the cross-canonical tag, then he located such evidence and therefore we agree Bing does support the tag.
The statement Dr. Pete shared was that "Bing does support cross-domain canonical". There was no limiting factor. I mention this because you said they offered "some" support and I am not sure why you used that qualifier.
-
Ryan, at the end o the thread you linked to, it seems like both Dr. Pete and yourself, agreed that there wasn't much evidence of bing support. Have you learned something that changed your mind?
I know a rep from Bing told Dr. Pete there was "some" support, but what does that mean? i.e. Exactly Identical sites pass a little juice/authority, or similar sites pass **a lot **juice/authority?
Take a product that has different brands in different parts of the country. Hellmanns's and Best Foods for example. They have two sites which are the same except for logos. Here is a recipe from each site.
http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1
http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1
The sites are nearly identical except for logo's/product names.
For the (very) long tail keyword "Mayonnaise Bobby Flay Waldorf salad wrap" Best Foods ranks #5 and Hellmann's ranks #11.
I doubt they have a SEO looking very close at the sites, because in addition to their duplicate content problem, neither pages has a meta description.
If the Hellmanns page had a
[http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1](http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1)"/>
I'd expect to see the Best Foods page move up and Hellmanns move down in Google. But would Bing appears to not like the duplicate pages as much, currently the Best Food version ranks #12 and the Hellmann doesn't rank at all. My own (imperfect tests) lead me to believe that adding the rel="canonical" would help in google but not bing.
Obviously, the site owner would probably like one of those two pages to rank very high for the unbranded keyword, but they would want both pages to rank well if I added a branded term. My experience with cross-domain canonical in Google lead me to believe that even the non-canonical version would rank for branded keywords in Google, but what would Bing do?
I'd be very cautious about relying on the cross-domain canonical in Bing until I see some PUBIC announcement that it's supported. ```
-
I was bit confused when i read that. You put my mind to rest !
-
My apologies Atul. I am not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that. Please disregard.
-
Thanks Ryan!
So it will be a Canonical tag
-
I would advise NOT using the robots.txt file if at all possible. In general, the robots.txt file is a means of absolute last resort. The main reason I use the robots.txt file is because I am working with a CMS or shopping cart that does not have the SEO flexibility to noindex pages. Otherwise, the best robots.txt file is a blank one.
When you block a page in robots.txt, you are not only preventing content from being indexed, but you are blocking the natural flow of page rank throughout your site. The link juice which flows to the blocked page dies on the page as crawlers cannot access it.
-
That is correct. If you choose to read the information directly from Google it can be found here:
-
Thanks!
It's for a site in the Netherlands and google is about 98% of the market. Bing is comming up so a thing to check.
No-roboting is a way to do it i didn't think about! thanks for that. I will check with the client.
-
Thanks Ryan!
So link is like:
On the site a i will use the canonical to point everything to site A.
-
You mean rel=author on site A ? How does it help ? Where should rel=author points to ?
-
According to Dr. Pete Bing does support cross-domain canonical.
If you disagreed I would first recommend using rel=author to establish "Site A" was the source of the article.
-
A cross-domain canonical will help with Google. (make sure the pages truely are duplicate or very close), however, I haven't found any confirmation yet that Bing supports Cross Domain Canonical.
If the other sites don't need to rank at all, you could also consider no-roboting the job pages on the other sites, so that your only Site A's job listings get indexed.
-
Yes. A cross-domain canonical would solve the duplicate content issue and focus on the main site's ranking.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Will I be flagged for duplicate content by Google?
Hi Moz community, Had a question regarding duplicate content that I can't seem to find the answer to on Google. My agency is working on a large number of franchisee websites (over 40) for one client, a print franchise, that wants a refresh of new copy and SEO. Each print shop has their own 'microsite', though all services and products are the same, the only difference being the location. Each microsite has its own unique domain. To avoid writing the same content over and over in 40+ variations, would all the websites be flagged by Google for duplicate content if we were to use the same base copy, with the only changes being to the store locations (i.e. where we mention Toronto print shop on one site may change to Kelowna print shop on another)? Since the print franchise owns all the domains, I'm wondering if that would be a problem since the sites aren't really competing with one another. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdenPrez0 -
Same content, different languages. Duplicate content issue? | international SEO
Hi, If the "content" is the same, but is written in different languages, will Google see the articles as duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chalet
If google won't see it as duplicate content. What is the profit of implementing the alternate lang tag?Kind regards,Jeroen0 -
Domains and Domain Authority
Looking for some advice 🙂 I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate. How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO. thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Duplicate content - Images & Attachments
I have been looking a GWT HTML improvements on our new site and I am scratching my head on how to stop some elements of the website showing up as duplicates for Meta Descriptions and Titles. For example the blog area: <a id="zip_0-anchor" class="zippedsection_title"></a>This blog is full of information and resources for you to implement; get more traffic, more leads an /blog//blog/page/2//blog/page/3//blog/page/4//blog/page/6//blog/page/9/The page has rel canonicals on them (using Yoast Wordpress SEO) and I can't see away of stopping the duplicate content. Can anyone suggest how to combat this? or is there nothing to worry about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
No-index pages with duplicate content?
Hello, I have an e-commerce website selling about 20 000 different products. For the most used of those products, I created unique high quality content. The content has been written by a professional player that describes how and why those are useful which is of huge interest to buyers. It would cost too much to write that high quality content for 20 000 different products, but we still have to sell them. Therefore, our idea was to no-index the products that only have the same copy-paste descriptions all other websites have. Do you think it's better to do that or to just let everything indexed normally since we might get search traffic from those pages? Thanks a lot for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EndeR-0 -
Duplicate content on the same page--is this an issue?
We are transitioning to responsive design and some of our pages will not scale properly, so we were thinking of adding the same content twice to the same URL (one would be simple text -- for mobile and the other would include the images, etc for the desktop version), and content would change based on size of the screen. I'm not looking for another technical solution (I know google specifies that you can dynamically serve different content based on user agent)--I am wondering if any one knows if having the same exact content appear twice on the same URL will cause a problem with SEO (any historical tests or experience would be great). Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Duplicate content on ecommerce sites
I just want to confirm something about duplicate content. On an eCommerce site, if the meta-titles, meta-descriptions and product descriptions are all unique, yet a big chunk at the bottom (featuring "why buy with us" etc) is copied across all product pages, would each page be penalised, or not indexed, for duplicate content? Does the whole page need to be a duplicate to be worried about this, or would this large chunk of text, bigger than the product description, have an effect on the page. If this would be a problem, what are some ways around it? Because the content is quite powerful, and is relavent to all products... Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Creode0 -
HTTPS Duplicate Content?
I just recieved a error notification because our website is both http and https. http://www.quicklearn.com & https://www.quicklearn.com. My tech tells me that this isn't actually a problem? Is that true? If not, how can I address the duplicate content issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QuickLearnTraining0