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If Page.fr is in French, I'd use rel=alternate/hreflang and not the canonical tag. It should allow both versions to rank for the appropriate audience without causing issues with duplication:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
These aren't "true" duplicates and rel=canonical could disrupt the ranking ability of the French site.
The problem with (2) is that, if you cut the crawl path, Google can't process any on-page directives, like 301s, canonicals, etc. Now, eventually, they might try to re-crawl from the index (knowing the URL used to exist), but that can take a long time. So, while canonical is probably appropriate here, you may have to leave the old event/URL active long enough for Google to process the tag.
If these are really isolated cases, I wouldn't worry too much. Maybe rel=canonical them, and eventually Google will flush out the old URL. If this starts happening a lot, I'd really consider some kind of permanent URL for certain match-ups and events.
There's no easy answer. This stuff is very site-specific and can be tricky.
Sadly, no. It's tricky, but your best bet is probably to deliver a non-AJAX version to Google (or make the AJAX crawlable, although that depends entirely on your implementation) and then use rel=prev/next on Google's version. This is tricky at best, but Google has to be able to crawl the paginated URLs somehow.
Just so I understand - the "View All" isn't really a view all without being able to call the AJAX, right?
You might want to check out:
That's very odd - I'm afraid I haven't seen anything like that. A couple of questions:
(1) Does your analytics data match the GWT data? If so, can you segment it at all?
(2) Is there any reason Thursday might be meaningful? For example, do you publish new content on Thursday or resubmit your sitemap (sometimes, even little things can have an impact)?
(3) Do your logs show anything suspicious, such as bot activity on Thursdays? Do your logs match this data at all?
If all three are "no", I'd venture to say it's a GWT glitch and not to lose sleep over it. If it is a Penguin update test (and I'm not seeing evidence of a weekly pattern), you should see the impression changes in your analytics and logs. They shouldn't just be an artifact in GWT.
This is a pretty common problem with event-oriented sites, and there's no easy solution. It's a trade-off - if you keep creating new URLs every time a new event is listed, you risking producing a lot of near duplicates and eventually diluting your index. At best, you could have dozens or hundreds of pages competing for the same keywords.
You could canonical or 301-redirect to the most recent event, but that has trade-offs, too. For one, a huge number of either can look odd to Google. Also, the latest event may not always be an appropriate target page, especially if more than just the data is changing. Unfortunately, without seeing the content, it's really tough to tell.
The other option is to create a static URL for every pairing and update the content on that page (maybe creating archival URLs for the old content, that are lower priority in the site architecture). That way, the most current URL never changes. Again, this depends a lot on the site and the scope.
If you'r just talking about a couple of URLs for a handful of events, I wouldn't worry too much about it. I probably wouldn't reverse the URL ("A vs. B" --> "B vs. A"), as it doesn't gain you much, but I also wouldn't lose sleep over it. If each pairing can generate dozens of URLs, though, I think you may want to consider a change in your site architecture.
Argh... sorry, I didn't even check/see that. Yeah, that may be a real problem - you're basically sending two canonicalization signals that are in conflict. Is there any way to hide the defaults? If the canonicals point to (A), but then (A) redirects to (B), Google may just ignore the canonical.
Unfortunately, your options are to either: (1) hope for the best, (2) canonical to the uglier URL, or (3) kill the redirect and set the default parameters on the server-side (without resetting the URL).
I am primarily seeing the canonical URL in Google's index, so I'm not sure it's actually causing you harm. It's just not an ideal situation.
Keep in mind that our metrics (including MozRank, DA, and PA) don't measure the risk of Google devaluing or penalizing your link profile. By no-following these links, your raw inbound link equity will go down, and it will impact our metrics if those links made up a large portion of your profile.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean that it's the wrong thing to do. Taken to extreme, these kinds of footer links are getting increasingly risky. Unfortunately, mitigating that risk does mean losing any positive impact of those links. It's not an easy decision, and it may be painful in the short-term, but you're betting that short-term pain against the risk of long-term catastrophe.
Whether that's the right decision for your site today is a tough call (and certainly one we can't make without details), and I'm assuming you had good reason to make it. I wouldn't worry too much about our metrics, and I'd focus instead on the impact on your actual rankings and traffic (especially traffic that converts). Don't reverse the decision too lightly, because switching back and forth can also send negative signals to Google.
While the properly closed tag should have "... />", that's generally only an issue in very isolated cases. I've never seen it interfere with a canonical tag. It's a harmless change to make (and it is more correct), but my gut reaction is that this will make no difference. Google should be honoring these canonicals.
One odd thing I'm seeing. If I dig into the index, I'm finding the following page:
This may be an ad-tracking URL (?) and it's redirecting somehow (but not with a 301 or 302) to the non-canonical URL. This may be sending a mixed signal, and ideally it would redirect to the canonical version of the URL. I'm not sure where this version is coming from, so it's a bit hard to diagnose.
When you say "drop", what kind of movement are we talking about? Could you give a before/after example without naming the site?
The DA/PA algorithm is based on machine learning, so even if the link-graph remained static, it is recalibrated from time to time. Of course, on top of that, the link-graph never stays static. If you're talking about something like 62->60, it probably wouldn't mean much at all. If you're talking about 60->40 and consistently large-scale drops, that would more likely indicate problems with your link-building strategy across all of the sites.
There's no way to reverse proxy and hide that sub-domain? Ideally, a CDN for content itself would never be seen by the crawlers. If people are going to actually see this sub-domain and potentially link to it, then you're probably going to have to use cross-domain canonical. That's not an ideal solution, though - ideally, the CDN should be invisible to Google and visitors.
I'm not really even disagreeing, but the original goal was a balancing act. My recollection is that we wanted to find decent directories but also enough breadth that it covered a lot of industries. This naturally means that, for some industries, the end result isn't always as high-quality as we'd like. It also means that finding editorial directories was nearly impossible (there just aren't many of them).
I would not list yourself in 75-100 directories, regardless of industry. It could absolutely look low-quality, especially with exact-match anchor text.
I know there's been discussion about whether this is a resource we want to continue to support, and I can't give a definitive answer, because there isn't one at this point. The goal was to try to create something actionable and weed out the truly bad directories, but as Google's attitude towards directories change (and, unfortunately, as some directories become lower quality over time), we'll probably have to revisit this.
It turns out to be a bit complicated, since DA/PA are based on a machine-learning algorithm. Dr. Matt Peters, our resident data scientist, answered a similar question here:
https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/22546573-domain-page-authority-logarithmic
That's always been a tough line to tread - we want to list potentially useful resources, but that list is certainly not an endorsement. Personally, I think directories can have limited value, but:
(1) It's true that Google doesn't put much value on non-editorial directories.
(2) It's an easy thing to abuse. Picking a couple of relevant directories to list yourself in can be a way to pick up a few links and get a small amount of traffic, but someone is going to try to list themselves in all 455, which would be a terrible idea.
I think the original goal was to help people understand the diversity of what's out there and give them enough information that they could find 2-3 relevant directories that fit their niche. Unfortunately, in SEO, any good thing can be taken too far and often is.
You can use wild-cards, in theory, but I haven't tested "?" and that could be a little risky. I'd just make sure it doesn't over-match.
Honestly, though, Robots.txt isn't as reliable as I'd like. It can be good for preventing content from being indexed, but once that content has been crawled, it's not great for removing it from the index. You might be better off with META NOINDEX or using the rel=canonical tag.
It depends a lot on what parameters you're trying to control, what value these pages have, whether they have links, etc. A wholesale block of everything with "?" seems really dangerous to me, IMO.
If you want to give a few example URLs, maybe we could give you more specific advice.
Oh... argh. Yeah, that makes step one easy. In some cases meta refresh acts like a 301 (if it's set to 0 seconds), and in others it doesn't, and there isn't a lot of rhyme or reason. Get the page-by-page redirects running, and you may see a pretty quick positive impact.
I'm slightly confused - I thought you said the 301-redirects already were page level.
I'm not a Drupal expert, but it sounds like you may have some kind of relative path that's getting perpetuated. Robots.txt could help as a patch, but I'd definitely want to solve the crawl problem, as this could spin out into other problems.
Have you tried a desktop crawler, like Xenu or Screaming Frog? Sorry, it's tough to diagnose without seeing the actual site, but it's almost got to be a relative path that's causing "/product" to keep being added to links.
The result count at the top is always the total count, regardless of how you filter. I'd look at only external links that are 301ed or followed, and that should be a much more accurate number.
No, not at all - honestly, you remember more about mR than I do 
We're definitely not trying to hide anything - it's just complicated. We've also sort of slowly moved away from mT/mR, because they just weren't as predictive as we'd like.
Sorry, I should've said "I'm not sure how / how much we measure..." - it's been a while since I've dug into mR and mT, and I don't know how much an internal link structure could tip the balance. Like PageRank, it's iterative, so you'd have to crunch the numbers - it's not a simple, linear equation I could spell out here (even if knew/remembered it).
Truthfully, it's rarely worth getting hung up on, especially if PA/DA are solid and the site is ranking well. Knowing exactly why the competitor has a higher mR would rarely provide much or any advantage. It's generally better to track their strongest links and see if you're missing anything.
I'm honestly not sure if we measure internal links as part of MozRank - I'd have to check into that. If one site were much larger, with a ton of indexed pages (including duplicates), it might dilute mR, but I can't say that with any confidence. It's similar to PageRank, but not exactly the same.
It's tough without seeing the sites, but MozRank is a bit more of a pure quantity score than DA/PA (which are built to predict ranking power). The fact that you have a lower MozRank but significantly higher PA suggest to me that the competitor is playing a numbers game. Your top links may have a higher quality, but they may just have more overall links, multiple links from some domains (site-wide maybe), etc.
I'd rather be higher on PA, buy our numbers. The picture I'm seeing here suggests your overall quality is better than your competitor's, so I don't think I'd go chasing after their link profile.
I wouldn't use both 301s and rel=canonicals for the same purpose. It's fine to have 301s to redirect non-www URLs, and then canonicals for other problems, but I wouldn't double them up for the same issue. The 301s are the proper solution here.
Your 301s don't seem to be triggering. Did you remove this code? Unfortunately, diagnosing someone's rewrites in .htaccess is incredibly difficult without direct access.
How does Google crawl your site? It looks like all of the products are only available by submitting a form (pulldowns). Google can't take that action, which could be causing major problems with your PageRank flow internally. You need paths that Google can use to reach the actual products. Honestly, form selects menus aren't typically a good solution for users, either.
Ignoring toolbar PageRank (which can be very unreliable), have rankings and/or traffic fallen? What does DA/PA look like in our numbers? It's entirely possible the domain change was just a coincidence, but without historical data to compare to, it can be very tough to tell.
Yeah, I'm with Mike - these are prone to cause you some real trouble. Given how many there probably are and how often they change/rotate, I'd strongly suggest using rel=canonical or some not indexing the alternate offers somehow.
They may be necessary for users, but these pages aren't all necessary to have in your index. By trying to rank for every single one, you risk harming your more important rankings. Honestly, as Mike said, Google can't even really tell these are different, except for the URLs, so even the long-tail ranking benefits are nearly zero, I suspect.
Just wanted to add a note that our tools do not detect duplicates across domains or on other websites, so these warnings are completely tied to your own pages/URLs.
These are "near" duplicates in our view, and Takeshi is right - there are many possible solutions. I'm guessing you can't directly combine them, from an e-commerce standpoint, but I would suggest either making a "parent" page and using rel=canonical, or just making sure there's navigation between the formats/versions and then pointing rel=canonical to the most common version (i.e. that your customers buy).
Technically, this will remove one version from ranking consideration, but I think that's preferable to having 100s or 1000s of versions out there and diluting your ranking ability or even having Panda-related problems. It's one thing if you have Amazon's link profile, but the rest of us aren't so lucky.
I agree with Tom that rel=canonical should work here, but it does depend a bit on the scope and structure of the site. I might actually META NOINDEX the printable versions, as these are usually dead-ends and have no value to search visitors. I'm not entirely sure I understand what (3) is or why it's a separate page.
In general, though, you should get these under control, as it sounds like every advert basically has 4 different URLs. This could dilute your ranking ability and even cause Panda problems.
These problems can be really tough to in down, but if you only blocked one site-link, I really doubt that was the culprit here. It is possible that the canonical tag got misapplied or impacted pages you didn't expect it to, but I can only speculate about that.
In my experience, try not add to add/delete (or comment out) canonicals in quick succession. It can cause problems. If you suspect a problem, phase them back in slowly - start with the home-page and problem areas, etc. Give it time, and measure. When you roll them out all at once, it's sometimes tough to diagnose what went wrong.
The "Notice" level is just telling you that your pages all have rel=canonical elements on them, and they all seem to be pointing to themselves. This is really just a heads up, and doesn't indicate a problem, per se.
As you grow, I think you may want to control how some of your very similar pages are indexed, such as color and quantity variations. These pages can look "thin" to Google, in that they're very similar. Currently, though, your site is small enough that it shouldn't be a big issue, and our notice is the lowest least severe message (notice < warning < error).
The rel=canonical element basically tells Google that two URLs are equivalent or very similar, and to only allow one to rank. This helps control duplicates and avoid issues with Panda or having Google filter out pages in unexpected ways.
We get this confusion often enough that we'll be changing it up a bit in the near future.
If this was a common problem, I'd probably recommend a different structure, with a parent page that splits into arrangements (cello/piano, flute/piano, etc.) and then rel=canonical to the parent product. Practically, though, this looks like a very isolated case on your site affecting maybe a dozen pages out of thousands. I probably wouldn't lose sleep over it, as I doubt it's having much impact either way. I think it's just something to be aware of for down the road, as the site grows.
Just to clarify - you had expanded site-links and then blocked one in GWT, and suddenly saw crawl spikes and oddities? Wow, I can't say I've ever seen or heard that. To the best of my knowledge, the site-link blocking is entirely a cosmetic issue meant to help webmasters, and is not in any way a quality signal.
My gut reaction is that it's a coincidence. Did anything else happen that day? Did you make any tweaks in GWT while you were in there that seemed tiny at the time?
Did you block a lot of site-links, such that your site's appearance in search changed radically. Let's say I got a full 6-pack of site-links and then blocked them all and Google (for some reason) didn't replace them with new ones. That could cause an immediate CTR drop that might signal quality problems. It's just speculation, but I can imagine that happening.
The duplicate content interface can occasionally be confusing in our campaign manager. I think you're reading this wrong, as I look at your account (to be fair to the other people trying to help, they don't have the ability to do that and are doing their best to assist). You have some duplicates due to a navigational issue, I think. For example:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/PatrickCollectionFlPf.html?tab=mp3
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/PatrickCollectionVcPf.html?tab=mp3
These appear to be nearly identical, except for breadcrumb links. I think that's what we're picking up on. They each canonical to their core HTML page (without parameters), but those two pages are different, so the duplicates appear to be true duplicates.
I think your tabs are generally ok, and Google doesn't seem to be indexing the "tab=mp3" vs. "tab=pdf", etc. versions. I'm not sure canonical is completely consistent with Google's intentions (they aren't true duplicates), but it's probably a safe bet.
I won't give any numbers, but your duplicate content error count relative to your total indexed page could is incredibly low, so I think this may just be a fluke of a product that got double-listed or a category that has two paths.
I've got it in the support queue but don't have a firm answer yet. I suspect it would require a data update - those are getting faster (about 2-3 weeks).
Like Alan, I have my doubts about whether the canonical tag is the best bet here. If the download/order page are down the click path from the product info page, I think it's ok to META NOINDEX,FOLLOW those pages (they have little or no search value). I generally wouldn't noindex and canonical a page - it's a mixed signal, and if things go wrong, you won't know why.
So, just to be sure: Six months ago, they 301-redirect the old domain to the new domain, correct? A couple of questions:
(1) Have you verified that this is a single-hop 301-redirect using 3rd-party header checkers? In other words, make sure it's working the way they think it's working. I don't say that to be condescending, but because I've seen it screwed up many, many times.
(2) Did they redirect on a page-by-page basis, or did everything just go to the new home-page? Are there potentially pages that got left out?
(3) Is the new page topically relevant to the old page (sounds like they're the same company)?
(4) Is there any sign of bad links on the old domain? Sometimes, links that didn't impact a domain after a long time can cause problems after a redirect.
Ah, got it - you've got PA on a few pages, but that's it. Yeah, that definitely seems wrong. Let me ping support and see if we can get any answers.
I'm not seeing any issues in the source code, and Xenu (desktop crawler) is seeing the internal links. You've got 22K+ pages indexed in Google, and the cached version looks normal (no cloaking or other oddities).
Are you check the "www" or non-www version? I notice you redirect to "www", so some of our tools may give you odd stats on the non-canonical version. I've seeing a PA of 39 in Open Site Explorer, though.
Let me know where you're looking, and maybe I can get Support to take a peek. It is possible something happened with blocking our bots in the past (I'm not sure how often we re-check that).
The short answer is: No. They're not coming back, in the sense that anything has changed or that they carry any more weight than they did last year. All signs point to their continued decline. Google has publicly stated that it carries no positive ranking value.
Technically, Alan is correct - evidence suggest that Yahoo/Bing used Meta keywords as a ranking signal more recently than Google. Most of that evidence is 2+ years old, though, and I've seen no compelling reasons to think that it will tip the balance in any competitive situation on Bing. Even that 2009 article basically says: "Sure, use it, but don't expect much", IMO.
Here's the other problem - Meta keywords has been used as a negative ranking signal, and probably still is to some degree. In other words, you might not gain much or anything from using it, but if you spam it, you could get devalued. My gut feeling is that the negative signal is much, much stronger than the positive one, and even Google may still use it as a negative signal. I'm certain that Yahoo/Bing has used it as a negative signal (not sure if they still do).
I tend to agree that the competitive fears are overblown. Any decent site's keyword targets should be pretty clear - otherwise, it's not a very well SEO'd site.
Personally, if you want to use them, use them - but keep them short, sweet, and relevant. Once you do, get on with your life.
Good discussion here. I tend to lean a bit toward Marie in that, even if these are low-relevance site-wide links, one site isn't generally going to tip the balance. You could request removal and disavow, but I don't think I'd lose sleep over it unless I saw a pattern.
It may be moot, because I'm now showing that this blog has been removed. So, others may have had an issue as well. Once Google re-indexes, these links will be dead.
I think it depends a lot on quality, honestly - a "mat release" could just be glorified article marketing, if the sources are questionable. It's easy for someone to make big promises, but odds are you won't be on the LA Times, you'll be on the "hundreds more trusted sites", especially if the price-tag is too good to be true.
I disagree re: first-indexed always winning. Authority can overwhelm that, in some cases, and a major news outlet could get credit for your content. Google is still not great at this. Now, if it's linked back, as you said, that definitely helps a lot.
So, let's say you post something and it goes out to 800 sites. Typically, some of those sites will be flagged as duplicates and filtered out. Yours may not be, but if enough of them are, those links will lose value, too (a non-indexed page doesn't carry link equity). So, even if you get credit, the links could be of limited value.
Now, if you actually could get on 800 top media sites, that may be different, but if it's really syndicated it's not going to get top billing. So, it's not just a matter of the sites, but where on the sites you appear. Are you on CNN's home-page or buried on some citizen reporter opinion mini-blog?
I just tend to hear a lot of too-good-to-be-true in this, honestly.
Well, it's hard to refute your data with my total lack of data Have you tried any kind of hybrid approach - make it image-rich but use CSS-styled text and avoid the fully boxed/bannered approach? I'm just thinking that might not only make the button stand out even more, but it would make the text crawlable. Could be a dual win.
Unfortunately, when it comes to things like dynamic content, "can't" is often dev-code for "won't". I've been on that side of the fence, so I don't want to speak ill, but it's frustrating. I do think you're #3 is at least a good start, and should be relatively straightforward. I definitely share your concerns about the current setup.
I do not like that 303-redirect setup. It looks like Google is indexing pch.com, but the cache is empty, and title/snippet match the non-redirected page. This could look like an odd form of cloaking, and landing on "/urecognized" seems like a recipe for trouble (it's a really bad URL from a UX perspective, too - it sounds like an error page).
I'd also argue that the page for new visitors looks like a giant ad. It needs some explanatory content. Yes, many people know who you are, but we don't know what the site does or why we should care. What's "obvious" internally is completely opaque to the average visitor. Richer content on this page would serve both SEO and conversion.
Could you serve up the home-page dynamically - display member content if they're logged in but generic content if they're not, and avoid the redirect entirely? That's not quite like your (1) or (2), and I think it's safer than (2). If not, then (3) would be preferable, worst-case. Once a member is logged in and knows the site, a redirect is no problem.
This is a tough situation. I tend to agree with Ricky - these are exactly the kinds of pages that have been hit by Panda, and there's real risk. In the old days, the biggest risk was that the pages would just stop getting traffic. Now, the impact could hit the rest of the site as well, and it's a lot more dangerous.
The problem is that it's working for now, and you're asking them to give up traffic in the short-term to avoid losing it in the long-term. Again, I think the long-term risk is serious (and it's not that easy to recover from), but the short-term pain to the client is very real.
What's the scope of the 300 pages compared to the rest of the site (are we talking a 400 page site or a 40,000 page site)? How many of these city pages are getting real traffic? My best alternative solution is to pin down the 10-20% of the city pages getting most of the traffic, temporarily NOINDEX the rest, and then beef up those well-trafficked city pages with unique content (so, maybe you're talking about 30 pages). Then, build out from there.
Give these pages real value - it's not only good for SEO, but it will probably improve conversion, too. The other problem with pages that just swap out a city is that they're often low quality - they may draw traffic in, but then have high bounce rates and low conversion. If you can show that you can improve the value, even with some traffic loss, it's easier to win this fight.
I apologize, but I'm going to paint a slightly more grim picture. While there's nothing wrong with 301s, in theory, large-scale URL changes on a new site do carry very real risk, even with a flawless 301 implementation. The 301s won't pass all authority (there is some small loss), and if your site is new enough or not on Google's radar quite enough, you could experience short-term ranking loss while everything gets sorted out. At very large scale, and for the wrong reasons, a massive 301 implementation could even raise red flags with Google.
I guess I'd ask two big questions:
(1) Why are you changing your URLs so soon? If it's to tweak out some tiny bit of keyword usage and SEO gain, I'd almost never do it on a 2-month-old site. If it's to fix a problem, that's different.
(2) Are the category filter pages active in the new structure/design? I'm not clear on why you wouldn't 301-redirect them.
My gut feeling is that you're trying to solve a problem with the current URLs, and the solution depends a lot on understanding that problem. Change for change's sake carries a lot of risk for a new site, IMO.
Yeah, I think that's relatively safe, although it depends a bit on the scope relative to your overall site index and link profile (I wouldn't set up 500 affiliate URLs with a canonical on a site that only had 600 indexed URLs and a few dozen non-affiliate links). Keep in mind that Google may still choose to devalue the affiliate link, but the canonical tag will keep these landing pages from looking like duplicates and should prevent anything harsher.
I think I'd start slowly in that case. Keep the relationship aspect in mind, too. Even if all three companies know the writer/client and are aware of the relationship, sooner or later one of these articles is going to take off. If one site gets the SEO credit and the other two sites aren't ranking, there may be friction. Even if the work is spread out evenly and all high-quality, you don't control (ultimately) what content finally sticks and is successful. I just think things could get weird all-around if you send every article three places and only one gets credit.
Yeah, to be fair, I'm not clear on what all of the additional parameters (like "lpg=") do, so this can get tricky fast. Basically, look at it this way:
If the URL is:
example.com/page=3?param=x
Then the tags should point to:
Rel=prev:
example.com/page=2?param=x
Rel=next:
example.com/page=4?param=x
Rel=canonical:
example.com/page=3 (no parameters)
Some parameters may not be indexed and/or functional, though, so individual cases can vary. You may choose to ignore some parameters in Google Webmaster Tools, for example. It gets tricky as the parameter list grows.
Ah, understood. So, yes, in theory cross-domain canonical does handle this. I know major newspapers that use it for true syndication. There is risk, though, depending on the sites and content, and there is a chance Google will ignore it (moreso than in-domain canonical). So, I mostly wanted you to be aware of those risks.
META NOINDEX is safer, in some respects (Google is more likely to honor it), but if people start linking to multiple versions of the content, then you may lose the value of those inbound links on the NOINDEX'ed content. Since it's not showing up in search results, that's less likely (in other words, people are going to be most inclined to link to the canonical version), but it's a consideration.
It's really tough to give a recommendation without understanding the business model, but if you absolutely have to have separate sites and you feel that this content is valuable to the visitors of all three sites, then cross-domain canonical is an option. It's just not risk-free. Personally, I'd probably start with unique content across the three domains, then phase in the most useful pieces as duplicates with canonical. Measure and see how it goes. Don't launch 1,000 duplicates on three sites in one day.
Sorry, I think I confused myself after I read the replies
Meta Robots (NOINDEX) is probably your best bet, then. Canonical would be a decent bet if you expected the landings pages to have inbound links or other ranking signals (like a 301, they can help consolidate those signals). If it's a landing page purely for purposes outside of organic search, though, simply blocking it is fine.