Cross Domain Rel Canonical for Affiliates?

[xoffie]

Hi

We use the Cross Domain Rel Canonical for duplicate content between our own websites, but what about affiliates sites who want our XML feed, (descriptions of our products).

We don´t mind being credited but would this present a danger for us? Who is controlling the use of that cross domain rel canonical, us in our feed or them?

Is there another way around it?

[NakulGoyal]

There's no way for you to force the affiliates to do a canonical tag from their website to yours. For you it makes sense, for them it doesn't. Because once they do a canonical tag to your website, their pages won't be indexed any more which means if their traffic source is SEO, they won't get any of that. There's no reason for them to do it. The best way to think is if you can do the datafeed without descriptions or maybe much shorter version of the meta description, like a lot of merchants do Short Descriptions. It helps both the affiliates as well as the merchants. Less duplicate content. I hope that helps.