Canonical cross domain Linkjuice
-
I know that back few years ago, rel=canonical used on cross-domain was passing link juice. As I've read based on many experts (case studies), the canonical cross-domain was working like implementing a 301.
Is it still the case ? Does anyone tried to implement it recently and it worked ?
-
I do have duplucate content (products) on my new platform and I wonder if putting all the links of those products on Canonical could benefit the original specialized websites.
Google has not said exactly how they treat these.
I believe that rel=canonical has become a substitute for the old method of building links by article syndication. I believe that many people are doing it at industrial scale and that google will eventually start to discount the beneifits, ignore the benefits or penalize some uses of rel=canonical.
For that reason I am staying away from rel=canonical just like I stay away from dropping links in forums, buying links, linkwheels, syndicating articles, etc. That's me being cautions and taking care of my websites.
Each person must decide what they are willing to do. You can wait until Google publishes it in their webmaster guidelines or you can stop doing something that Google might simply refer to as "manipulation" without getting specific about it. Google is specific about very few things.
-
Thanks EGL for your response.
Here is the situation, I have 2 websites for specific markets. The websites were doing good. I decided that it might be good to have the products of both websites on a single platform as I was seeking to focus the effort on a single website. However, after few years, I did realize that the newly created platform will never take over both specialized websites as these websites were pretty well ranked on Google
My issue is, currently, I do have duplucate content (products) on my new platform and I wonder if putting all the links of those products on Canonical could benefit the original specialized websites. The resultas on the platform is decreasing as my main focus is on the 2 websites that generates revenues.Is there any purpose on doing so ? I mean putting canonical on the platform's urls ?
-
Let's say we have two domains. The "source domain" where the article first appeared and the "republisher domain" where the article has been posted with rel=canonical pointing back to the "source domain".
If you use a cross-domain canonical the copy of the article on the source domain will remain in the Google index. The article on the republisher domain will not be indexed. Also, any page that links to the page of the republished article will appear in the Search Console backlinks of the source article page.
The above is information that you can verify as fact through testing.
What can not be verified is how Google counts the juice from all of those links that show up in your Search Console.
My personal opinion is that Google faithfully counted the linkjuice when rel=canonical was first suggested "by Google" for attributing the source of republished articles.
However, I currently doubt that the linkjuice from cross-domain canonicals still carries the same value. And, because some people have been using cross-domain rel=canonical at industrial scale, I am starting to believe that manipulative use of rel=canonical can result in the same problems that you would incur from building unnatural links.
I am not doing anything at industrial scale, but because of the above I am not going to use cross-domain rel=canonical in the future and have taken down some republished pages that have been in place for a couple of years.
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
-
Can a domain name alone be considered SPAM?
If someone has a domain that is spammy, such as "http://seattlesbestinsurancerates.com" can this cause Google to not index the website? This is not our domain, but a customer of ours has a similar one and it appears to be causing issues! Any thoughts? Thanks for any input!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Tosten0 -
Why does expired domains still work for SEO?
Hi everyone I’ve been doing an experiment during more than 1 year to try to see if its possible to buy expired domains. I know its considered black hat, but like I said, I wanted to experiment, that is what SEO is about. What I did was to buy domains that just expired, immediately added content on a WP setup, filled it with relevant content to the expired domain and then started building links to other relevant sites from these domains.( Here is a pretty good post on how to do, and I did it in a similar way. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2297718/How-to-Build-Links-Using-Expired-Domains ) This is nothing new and SEO:s has been doing it for along time. There is a lot of rumors around the SEO world that the domains becomes worthless after they expire. But after trying it out during more than 1 year and with about 50 different expired domains I can conclude that it DOES work, 100% of the time. Some of the domains are of course better than others, but I cannot see any signs of the expired domains or the sites i link to has been punished by Google. The sites im liking to ranks great ONLY with those links 🙂 So to the question: WHY does Google allow this? They should be able to see that a domain has been expired right? And if its expired, why dont they just “delete” all the links to that domain after the expiry date? Google is well aware of this problem so what is stopping them? Is there any one here that know how this works technically?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sir0 -
Keyword Named Domains
First, I'm new to SEO so bear with me. My company owns a list of domains with names that are keywords for us. Right now, all those domains are redirecting to our main site. None of the domains has ever had content; they were purchased recently and simple redirected. My questions are: 1) is there any value in having domains that are exact keywords on which we'd like to rank, (i.e. does this work to improve site traffic and ultimately rankings, or is this a black hat tactic)? and, 2) would there ever be any value in turning these sites into landing pages with content and outbound links that lead to our original site? Thanks for your advice.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SpearOne0 -
Blog on 2 domains (.org/.com), Canonical to Solve?
I have a client that has moved a large majority of content to their .org domain, including the blog. This is causing some issues for the .com domain. I want to retain the blog on the .org and have it's content also show on the .com. I would place the canonical tag on the .com Is this possible? Is this recommended?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ngst0 -
competitor sites link to a considerable amount of irrelevant sites/nonsense sites that seem to score high with regard to domain authority
According to my recent SEOmoz links analysis, my competitor sites link to a considerable amount of irrelevant sites/nonsense sites that seem to score high with regard to domain authority... e.g. wedding site linking to a transportation attorney's website. Aother competitor site has an overall of 2 million links, most of which are seemingly questionable index sites or forums to which registration is unattainable. I recently created a 301 redirect, and my external links have yet to be updated to my new domain name in SEOmoz. Yet, by comparing my previous domain authority rank with those of the said competitor sites, the “delta” is relatively marginal. The SEOmoz rank is 21 whereas the SEOmoz ranks of two competitor sites 30 and 33 respectively. The problem is, however, is to secure a good SERP for the most relevant terms with Google… My Google pagerank was “3” prior to the 301 redirect. I worked quite intensively so as to receive a pagerank only to discover that it had no affect at all on the SERP. Therefore, I took a calculated risk in changing to a domain name that translates from non-latin characters, as the site age is marginal, and my educated guess is that the PR should rebound within 4 weeks, however, I would like to know as to whether there is a way to transfer the pagerank to the new domain… Does anyone have any insight as to how to go about and handling this issue?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eranariel0 -
Possibly a dumb question - 301 from a banned domain to new domain with NEW content
I was wondering if banned domains pass any page rank, link love, etc. My domain got banned and I AM working to get it unbanned, but in the mean time, would buying a new domain, and creating NEW content that DOES adhere to the google quality guidelines, help at all? Would this force an 'auto-evaluation' or 're-evaluation' of the site by google? or would the new domain simply have ZERO effect from the 301 unless that old domain got into google's good graces again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0 -
How can I make use of multiple domains to aid my SEO efforts?
About an year, the business I work for purchased 20+ domains: sendmoneyfromcanada.com sendmoneyfromaustralia.com sendmoneyfromtheuk.com sendmoneyfromireland.com The list goes on, but you can get the main idea. They thought that the domains can be useful to aid http://www.transfermate.com/ . I can set up a few micro sites on them, but from that point there will be no one to maintain them. And I'm, honestly, not too happy with hosting multiple sites on one IP and having them all link to the flagship. It is spammy and it does not bring any value to end users. I might be missing something, so my question is - Can I use these domains to boost my rankings, while avoiding any shady/spammy techniques? P.S. I had this Idea of auctioning the domains in order to cover for the domain registration fees.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Svetoslav0