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
-
How to Evaluate Original Domain Authority vs. Recent 'HTTPS' Duplicate for Potential Domain Migration?
Hello Everyone, So our site has used ‘http’ for the domain since the start. Everything has been set up for this structure and Google is only indexing these pages. Just recently a second version was created on ‘httpS’. We know having both up is the worst case scenario but now that both are up is it worth just switching over or would the original domain authority warrant just keeping it on ‘http’ and redirecting the ‘httpS’ version? Assuming speed and other elements wouldn’t be an issue and it's done correctly. Our thought was if we could do this quickly it would be easier to just redirect the ‘httpS’ version but was not sure if the Pros of ‘httpS’ would be worth the resources. Any help or insight would be appreciated. Please let us know if there are any further details we could provide that might help. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance for the help. Best,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ben-R1 -
Duplicate Content through 'Gclid'
Hello, We've had the known problem of duplicate content through the gclid parameter caused by Google Adwords. As per Google's recommendation - we added the canonical tag to every page on our site so when the bot came to each page they would go 'Ah-ha, this is the original page'. We also added the paramter to the URL parameters in Google Wemaster Tools. However, now it seems as though a canonical is automatically been given to these newly created gclid pages; below https://www.google.com.au/search?espv=2&q=site%3Awww.mypetwarehouse.com.au+inurl%3Agclid&oq=site%3A&gs_l=serp.3.0.35i39l2j0i67l4j0i10j0i67j0j0i131.58677.61871.0.63823.11.8.3.0.0.0.208.930.0j3j2.5.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..8.3.419.nUJod6dYZmI Therefore these new pages are now being indexed, causing duplicate content. Does anyone have any idea about what to do in this situation? Thanks, Stephen.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyPetWarehouse0 -
Same content on other domain owned by de company. Canonical is not working
Hi! I am analyzing a website right now. It's a school, let's name it NEWSCHOOL. This school is owned by other school, let's name it, BIGSCHOOL NEWSCHOOL is specialized in tourism degrees, and the BIGSCHOOL is a bigger and older one with a lot of different degrees. What happens is that NEWSCHOOL has a course, let's name it TOURISM DEGREE.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
BIGSCHOOL has that course too, with the same content, trying to help to promote the content, because this school is older, well known and has a consolidated brand internationally. BIGSCHOOL, has placed a canonical tag, telling Google that content comes from NEWSCHOOL. What is happening is that the result of newschool is beeing omited by google. The first result is the BIGSCHOOL content, and then a lot of training portals, where the degree content is too to increase its visibility. So, I would like to know, how can we do to say google that the content that it should show is the one of NEWSCHOOL and not the one in BIGSCHOOL. It's pretty clear that Google knows that those portals are closed related, because it is omitting the NEWSCHOOL results. I know that we can send a link from the content area from one portal to the other in the content we want. But... would it solve the problem... and y we have to repeat that for each degree, woudn't it be a little dangerous? Would like to know your points of view! Thanks!0 -
Implications of posting duplicate blog content on external domains?
I've had a few questions around the blog content on our site. Some of our vendors and partners have expressed interest in posting some of that content on their domains. What are the implications if we were to post copies of our blog posts on other domains? Should this be avoided or are there circumstances that this type of program would make sense?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visier1 -
Noindex Valuable duplicate content?
How could duplicate content be valuable and why question no indexing it? My new client has a clever african safari route builder that you can use to plan your safari. The result is 100's of pages that have different routes. Each page inevitably has overlapping content / destination descriptions. see link examples. To the point - I think it is foolish to noindex something like this. But is Google's algo sophisticated enough to not get triggered by something like this? http://isafari.nathab.com/routes/ultimate-tanzania-kenya-uganda-safari-july-november
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman
http://isafari.nathab.com/routes/ultimate-tanzania-kenya-uganda-safari-december-june0 -
Microsite as a stand-alone site under one domain and sub-domained under another: duplicate content penalty?
We developed and maintain a microsite (example: www.coolprograms.org) for a non-profit that lives outside their main domain name (www.nonprofit-mainsite.org) and features content related to a particular offering of theirs. They are utilizing a Google Grant to run AdWords campaigns related to awareness. They currently drive traffic from the AdWords campaigns to both the microsite (www.coolprograms.org) and their main site (www.nonprofit-mainsite.org). Google recently announced a change in their policy regarding what domains a Google Grant recipient can send traffic to via AdWords: https://support.google.com/nonprofits/answer/1657899?hl=en. The ads must all resolve to one root domain name (nonprofit-mainsite.org). If we were to subdomain the microsite (example: coolprograms.nonprofit-mainsite.org) and keep serving the same content via the microsite domain (www.coolprograms.org) is there a risk of being penalized for duplicate content? Are there other things we should be considering?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marketing-iq0 -
How much (%) of the content of a page is considered too much duplication?
Google is not fond of duplication, I have been very kindly told. So how much would you suggest is too much?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonberenyi0 -
Fixing Duplicate Content Errors
SEOMOZ Pro is showing some duplicate content errors and wondered the best way to fix them other than re-writing the content. Should I just remove the pages found or should I set up permanent re-directs through to the home page in case there is any link value or visitors on these duplicate pages? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benners0