What to do with

[xoffie]

Hi

We run a few websites and when we canonically tag to let Google know which is our main brand for duplicate content we use a canonical tag.

However, we are also using noindex, nofollow and noarchive.

Is this correct, will the link juice of the canonical tag still flow with these meta names, is it necissary? what is the best practice for the Robots meta name here?

<meta name="<a class="attribute-value">robots</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">noindex, nofollow, noarchive</a>" /> 

[ORob]

Do your duplicate pages exist on the same website, or are they across multiple domains?

[xoffie]

Across multiple domains

Thanks for your help

[ORob]

Definitely an interesting situation. You are trying to prevent a duplicate content issue across domains by using both noindex and a canonical tag.

Typically it is used for similar pages within the same domain.

Google does say, "

Can rel="canonical" be used to suggest a canonical URL on a completely different domain?

There are situations where it's not easily possible to set up redirects. This could be the case when you need to migrate to a new domain name using a web server that cannot create server-side redirects. In this case, you can use the rel="canonical" link element to specify the exact URL of the domain preferred for indexing. While the rel="canonical" link element is seen as a hint and not an absolute directive, we do try to follow it where possible."

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

As such, with Google you would probably be ok just using the canonical. Bing however does not follow the tag so you could face issues with them. The link juice question is very good. I would hesitate to say that Google would fully take the directive of the canonical on a page it has been told to not index or follow. There is a chance they could hit that directive and then ignore the canonical.