This concern is not lost on me, but it prompts two questions. 1. How big a risk is it? 2. What other technical factors could be at play here?

Here is an example of a site that uses a directory for its homepage, whose SERP snippet shows its full path:

https://www.google.com/search?q=skype

The full URL of a particular site's homepage is something like http://www.example.com/directory/.
The canonical and og URLs match.
The root domain 301 redirects to it using the absolute path.

And yet the SERP (and the cached version of the page) lists it simply as http://www.example.com/.

What gives? Could the problem be found at some deeper technical level (.htaccess or DirectoryIndex or something?)

We fiddled with things a bit this week, and while our most recent changes appear to have been crawled (and cached), I am wondering whether I should give it some more time before I proceed as if the SERP won't ever reflect the correct URL. If so, how long?

[EDIT: From the comments, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8QKIweOzH4#t=2838]

Thanks. Ok looks like my client's individual pages, including their page-specific rel=canonicals are in fact being indexed. So far so good.

In this case, to address your question, I had had a need for a cross-domain rel=canonical. I no longer need it because the case is closed. But there are real-world use cases for it.

Wix, where can I go to edit the canonical tags for the escaped fragment versions of the pages on my client's Wix site? What you are saying makes sense to me conceptually, but I don't see where I  can edit anything but the one canonical tag. Once I do, how do I verify that it's being served to Google?

I would also be curious to verify that this crawling solution will not get sites penalized for cloaking. It does appear that Google has Ajax crawling guidelines, but I need to be assured that these are being followed and working as expected. (Sorry for my ignorance here--I'm not a developer and the client's on a budget. The crux of the value Wix brings is that it's accessible to non-developers.)

Recently discovered this:

Indicate the canonical version of a URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header. Addingrel="canonical" to the head section of a page is useful for HTML content, but it can't be used for PDFs and other file types indexed by Google Web Search. In these cases you can indicate a canonical URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header, like this (note that to use this option, you'll need to be able to configure your server).

Link: <http: www.example.com="" downloads="" white-paper.pdf="">; rel="canonical"</http:>

Google currently supports these link header elements for Web Search only.

-http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

That makes sense. I am looking into whether any portion of our content can be made public in a way that would still comply with industry regulations. I am betting against it.

Does anyone know whether a page requiring login like this could feasibly rank with a strong backlink profile or a lot of quality social mentions?

Should have read the target:

"Subscription designation, snippets only: If First Click Free isn't a feasible option for you, we will display the "subscription" tag next to the publication name of all sources that greet our users with a subscription or registration form. This signals to our users that they may be required to register or subscribe on your site in order to access the article. This setting will only apply to Google News results.

If you prefer this option, please display a snippet of your article that is at least 80 words long and includes either an excerpt or a summary of the specific article. Since we do not permit "cloaking" -- the practice of showing Googlebot a full version of your article while showing users the subscription or registration version -- we will only crawl and display your content based on the article snippets you provide. If you currently cloak for Googlebot-news but not for Googlebot, you do not need to make any changes; Google News crawls with Googlebot and automatically uses the 80-word snippet.

NOTE: If you cloak for Googlebot, your site may be subject to Google Webmaster penalties. Please review Webmaster Guidelines to learn about best practices."

"In order to successfully crawl your site, Google needs to be able to crawl your content without filling out a registration form. The easiest way to do this is to configure your webservers not to serve the registration page to our crawlers (when the user-agent is "Googlebot") so that Googlebot can crawl these pages successfully. You can choose to allow Googlebot access to some restricted pages but not others. More information about technical requirements."

-http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74536

Any harm in doing this while not implementing the rest of First Click Free??

What would you guys think about programming the login requirement behavior in such a way that only Google can't execute it--so Google wouldn't know that it is the only one getting through?

Not sure whether this is technically possible, but if it were, would it be theoretically likely to incur a penalty? Or is it foolish for other reasons?

Yes, Xenu Link Sleuth is supposed to be able do this. Here is a helpful post that includes a section on redirects.

It looks like the Yahoo Site Explorer and Open Site Explorer also report the 301s they are aware of as backlinks.

I'd love for someone else on here to confirm.

Like you I've also seen 301's significantly positively impact rankings.

Good luck with your research!

"In order to successfully crawl your site, Google needs to be able to crawl your content without filling out a registration form. The easiest way to do this is to configure your webservers not to serve the registration page to our crawlers (when the user-agent is "Googlebot") so that Googlebot can crawl these pages successfully. You can choose to allow Googlebot access to some restricted pages but not others. More information about technical requirements."

-http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74536

Any harm in doing this while not implementing the rest of First Click Free??

Thanks. Figured out a workaround.

Didn't see this post. Interesting.

Thanks. Ok looks like my client's individual pages, including their page-specific rel=canonicals are in fact being indexed. So far so good.

In this case, to address your question, I had had a need for a cross-domain rel=canonical. I no longer need it because the case is closed. But there are real-world use cases for it.

You're getting a piece of this company, right?