Cross-Domain Canonical Showing as inbound links?
-
I run several ecommerce websites, and there is some overlap in the products offered between sites. To solve this duplicate content issue, I use a cross-domain rel canonical so that there is only 1 authoritative page per product, even if it is sold on multiple sites.
However, I am noticing that my inbound link profile is massively expanding because Google sees these as inbound links. The top linking domains for my site are all owned by me, even though there are not any actual links between the sites.
Has anyone else experienced this?
-
I actually like it - think it makes sense for what you're describing, and I don't think I'd change it. The other option might be a 301 redirect or simply linking to only one site, but then you'd be changing branding/domain and possibly losing the customer.
-
Hey Rand, thanks for the info. I did notice that OSE is counting them as links as well. Do you think this is an issue in my scenario? Would I be better off no-indexing the "duplicate" product pages on the non-primary sites?
As a fake example, imagine I sell sewing machines on one site, arts and crafts on another. There is some overlap in products between these two industries, so it makes sense to show (as an example) yarn on both sites. However since the product pages are the same, you would want to avoid duplicate content being indexed. Do you think rel canonical or noindex is a better solution?
-
Yeah - I've seen it to (only had a single site cross-domaining). We're actually working to count these as links in OSE/Mozscape, because that appears to be how Google treats them. My guess is that they're actually more powerful than just a link (probably pass 90-95% of a page's link juice type metrics vs. some small fraction for an individual link), but in many other ways, very similar.
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
-
Pages canonicaled to another appearing before the canonical on google searches
Hello, When I do this google search, this page(amandine roses category) appears before the one it is canonical-ed to(this multi-product version of amandine roses). This happens often with this multi-product template, where they don't rank as well as their category version(that are canonical to the multi-product version). Can someone maybe point us in the right direction on what the issue may be? What can be improved?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globalrose.com0 -
Reasonable to Ask URL of Link from SEO Providing New Links before Link Activation?
My firm has hired an SEO to create links to our site. We asked the SEO to provide a list of domains that they are targeting for potential links. The SEO did not agree to this request on the grounds that the list is their unique intellectual property. Alternatively I asked the SEO to provide the URL that will be linking to our site before the link is activated. The SEO did not agree to this. However, they did say we could provide comments afterwards so they could tweak their efforts when the next 4-5 links are obtained next month. The SEO is adamant that the links will not be spam. For whatever it is worth the SEO was highly recommended. I am an end user; the owner and operator of a commercial real estate site, not an SEO or marketing professional. Is this protectiveness over process and data typical of link building providers? I want to be fair with the provider and hope I will be working with them a long time, however I want to ensure I receive high quality links. Should I be concerned? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Sub-domain vs Root domain
I have recently taken over a website (website A) that has a domain authority of 33/100 and is linked to from 39 root domains. I have not yet selected any keywords to target so am currently unsure of ranking positions. However, website A is for a division of a company that has its own separate website (website B) which has a domain authority of 58/100 and over 1000 legitimate linking root domains. I have the option of moving website A to a sub-domain of website B. I also have the option of having website B provide a followed link to website A. So, my question is, for SEO purposes, is my website better off remaining on its own existing domain or is it likely to rank higher as a sub-domain of website B? I am sure there are pros and cons for both options but some opinions would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BallyhooLtd0 -
Is it a problem that Google's index shows paginated page urls, even with canonical tags in place?
Since Google shows more pages indexed than makes sense, I used Google's API and some other means to get everything Google has in its index for a site I'm working on. The results bring up a couple of oddities. It shows a lot of urls to the same page, but with different tracking code.The url with tracking code always follows a question mark and could look like: http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example http://www.MozExampleURL.com?another-tracking-examle http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example-3 etc So, the only thing that distinguishes one url from the next is a tracking url. On these pages, canonical tags are in place as: <link rel="canonical<a class="attribute-value">l</a>" href="http://www.MozExampleURL.com" /> So, why does the index have urls that are only different in terms of tracking urls? I would think it would ignore everything, starting with the question mark. The index also shows paginated pages. I would think it should show the one canonical url and leave it at that. Is this a problem about which something should be done? Best... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Unpaid Followed Links & Canonical Links from Syndicated Content
I have a user of our syndicated content linking to our detailed source content. The content is being used across a set of related sites and driving good quality traffic. The issue is how they link and what it looks like. We have tens of thousands of new links showing up from more than a dozen domains, hundreds of sub-domains, but all coming from the same IP. The growth rate is exponential. The implementation was supposed to have canonical tags so Google could properly interpret the owner and not have duplicate syndicated content potentially outranking the source. The canonical are links are missing and the links to us are followed. While the links are not paid for, it looks bad to me. I have asked the vendor to no-follow the links and implement the agreed upon canonical tag. We have no warnings from Google, but I want to head that off and do the right thing. Is this the right approach? What would do and what would you you do while waiting on the site owner to make the fixes to reduce the possibility of penguin/google concerns? Blair
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlairKuhnen0 -
Technical Question on Image Links - Part of Addressing High Number of Outbound Links
Hi - I've read through the forum, and have been reading online for hours, and can't quite find an answer to what I'm searching for. Hopefully someone can chime in with some information. 🙂 For some background - I am looking closely at four websites, trying to bring them up to speed with current guidelines, and recoup some lost traffic and revenue. One of the things we are zeroing in on is the high amount of outbound links in general, as well as inter-site linking, and a nearly total lack of rel=nofollow on any links. Our current CMS doesn't allow an editor to add them, and it will require programming changes to modify any past links, which means I'm trying to ask for the right things, once, in order to streamline the process. One thing that is nagging at me is that the way we link to our images could be getting misconstrued by a more sensitive Penguin algorithm. Our article images are all hosted on one separate domain. This was done for website performance reasons. My concern is that we don't just embed the image via , which would make this concern moot. We also have an href tag on each to a 'larger view' of the image that precedes the img src in the code, for example - We are still running the numbers, but as some articles have several images, and we currently have about 85,000 articles on those four sites... well, that's a lot of href links to another domain. I'm suggesting that one of the steps we take is to rel=nofollow the image hrefs. Our image traffic from Google search, or any image search for that matter, is negligible. On one site it represented just .008% of our visits in July. I'm getting a little pushback on that idea as having a separate image server is standard for many websites, so I thought I'd seek additional information and opinions. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MediaCF0 -
Does Yahoo Directory Listing Pass Authority with PA:0 and 0 links from 0 Root Domains?
So we already have our brand listed in Yahoo Directory for a few years but today I noticed it is not listed in OSE and the pages we're listed on in Yahoo Dir are PA:0 / DA: 100 with 0 links from 0 Root Domains! (or with a PA:1) Does this mean no juice is being passed at all for this listing? Does it mean it is not even spidered by Google then as how can it be found if no inlinks? Does any authority still get passed from Yahoos domain with DA100 despite pages being PA0? I ask because I'm considering adding another company to Yahoo Dir to get some authority rather than traffic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
Sub Domain or New Domain?
Hi All, We have a client that has a business with three different services. 2 of these services compliment each other in a really obvious way, but the 3rd, while related is not such a obvious complimentary service. For this reason, service 3 kind of weakens the content of the website SEO wise for the two main services. Also, internally at the business it is run by an entirely different team so it feels culturally somewhat different. So, the client wants to pull all the content about service 3 and put it on a different website. Which would you chose as a domain for this new site: service3.existingdomain.co.uk or www.service3+brandname.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0