What happen if a canonical tag points to a noindex page?

[fablau]

Hello,
I have question. We have hundreds of affiliates that have implemented our datafeed on their websites, and to avoid duplicate content issues we are requiring them to put a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to our own original product page.

So, for example, if an affiliate has a page about our Product 101, they will have to add a canonical tag pointing to the corresponding product page on our own website:

www.ourwebsite.com/products/product101

Now, since many of our product pages have defined a "noindex" tag (due to Panda issues), may that be a problem? In other words: what kind of problems could cause having our  affiliates defining a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to the original product page on our website which have a "noindex" met tag defined? Maybe it is a stupid question we shouldn't worry about, but any thoughts about this scenario are very welcome!

Thank you in advance.

[Highland]

Likely the canonical will be ignored. Matt Cutts, on point, has said that canonical is a hint and Google reserves the right to ignore that hint. Over here, Matt says if you canonical to a 404 page the canonical WILL be ignored. It's not a stretch to assume that this would extend to a page that's has a directive to not be indexed.

[fablau]

Thank you, that was what I thought, but I needed someone else opinion to be sure that I wouldn't get penalized because of that.

Thanks for the link also!

I appreciated your help.

Fabrizio