I've copied a content from a government site as it is necessary. Should I add a canonical or just a reference link?

[zpm2014]

Thanks!

[GPainter]

Both do the same really with the exception of the user can see one more than the other. I would recommend the canonical which should help avoid duplicate content issues as the content is already there and I don't foresee the user needing a link.

in short- canonical it

more info - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

[JaneCopland]

Depending on how extensive your quoting of the government content is, you might just be able to link, or you might be better off canonicalising. A simple quote on an otherwise unique page is not reason to canonicalise, just as if you had quoted from a newspaper website in an article about a subject. There is no way you'd need to canonicalise your own article to that subject.

An entire page, lifted and republished for legitimate reasons, you could canonicalise to avoid any duplication confusion (even though a link was the proper way to go about identifying the original source of the content in the past).

[zpm2014]

Yes, I copied an entire page for a legitimate reason. Is it fine if I'll just add a link below the copied content for example "Original source: [url]"?

[JaneCopland]

The link might be enough but I am not sure what a Googler would say to the question. They might advise you to add a canonical tag due to the entire page being a duplicate. Using the canonical certainly can't hurt your site at all, besides the fact that that page won't rank (which isn't an issue). The rest of the site remains totally unaffected.

[zpm2014]

What if I still want the page to rank in Google since it's a resource though it's a duplicate content?

[JaneCopland]

Then you'd want to avoid the canonical, but it's unlikely that the page will rank well if you have copied it from a reliable resource like a government website. Google tends to try and filter copies like this, although sometimes you see the same thing ranking over and over again on different sites because those duplicated resources are legitimately the only relevant results for a user's query. When Google does filter duplicate results, it will try to pick the most authoritative resource to rank, discarding the rest. In a case like this, it'll pick the government website 99.9% of the time and discard copies.

If you really want that page to rank, you'd also want to avoid linking to the original source as well, as linking was a good way of specifying the source before canonicalisation. I wouldn't say that it's a good idea, though - there's no point adding duplicate content that lacks canonicalisation to your website when you don't need to, even if the content is a good resource.

[GPainter]

You may find this helpful - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy3_Rjc0Tso

I suppose you could get around it by creating it in an image or a way that Google bot wouldn't see is as duplicate content as much but its iffy.

Alternatively don't copy the content just reference it in a link then you don't have the content problem but the users can still see the content.