Anybody having success with Cross-Domain canonical?
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Has anyone been using rel="canonical" to attribute content that has been republished on Domain B... back to Domain A, which is the original source?
The videos below say that this should be working... I am asking to hear from anyone who has done it.
Has it worked as you expected? Did Domain A get the benefit that you expected?
Thanks!
========== Source Videos =============
Matt Cutts (April, 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI6L2N4A0hA
Matt Cutts (April, 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8XdFb6LGtM
Rand Fishkin (August, 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8drPXudZZc
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Yes I have done it and yes it seems to be working.
The daughter of the owner of the company I work for published an article on her site which we reprinted on ours, using the rel=canonical tag to indicate that her site had the original.
When I search for a string from the article, her site comes up and ours does not.
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I don't have much direct client experience with it (not very applicable to my previous niches), but I know that a couple of SEO friends in the newspaper industry reported using it successfully (very successfully, in one case) not long after Google approved cross-domain use. Of course, like anything, Google seems to modulate things over time, especially if they get abused. We're seeing a lot of changes in how 301s are handled this year, and I expect Google to start altering how canonicals (both internal and cross-domain) work, especially when people misuse them.
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Thank you for the report, Linda.
Glad to hear that it seems to be working.
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Thanks Doc!
Always good to be reminded that google often changes their mind on how they handle these things.
I think I am going to try it. If things don't work or if things change I can yank it off of the secondary site.