Syndicating duplicate content descriptions - Can these be canonicalised?

[MalcolmGibb]

Hi there,

I have a site that contains descriptions of accommodation and we also use this content to syndicate to our partner sites. They then use this content to fill their descriptions on the same accommodation locations.

I have looked at copyscape and Google and this does appear as duplicate content across these partnered sites.

I do understand as well that certain kinds of content will not impact Google's duplication issue such as locations, addresses, opening times those kind of things, but would actual descriptions of a location around 250 words long be seen and penalised as duplicate content?

Also is there a possible way to canonicalise this content so that Google can see it relates back to our original site?

The only other way I can think of getting round a duplicate content issue like this is ordering the external sites to use tags like blockquotes and cite tags around the content.

[EGOL]

Would actual descriptions of a location around 250 words long be seen and penalised as duplicate content?

Yes.  If that is the majority of page content.

Also is there a possible way to canonicalise this content so that Google can see it relates back to our original site?

Yes, if the duplicate pages had rel="canonical" applied as described here...

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

The problem with that is the webmasters who own the partner sites would have to apply this to their pages (if you don't have control) and some of them will realize that your goal is to discredit their pages.