Canonical cross domain Linkjuice

[manoman88]

I know that back few years ago, rel=canonical used on cross-domain was passing link juice. As I've read based on many experts (case studies), the canonical cross-domain was working like implementing a 301.

Is it still the case ? Does anyone tried to implement it recently and it worked ?

[EGOL]

Let's say we have two domains.  The "source domain" where the article first appeared and the "republisher domain" where the article has been posted with rel=canonical pointing back to the "source domain".

If you use a cross-domain canonical the copy of the article on the source domain will remain in the Google index.  The article on the republisher domain will not be indexed.   Also, any page that links to the page of the republished article will appear in the Search Console backlinks of the source article page.

The above is information that you can verify as fact through testing.

What can not be verified is how Google counts the juice from all of those links that show up in your Search Console.

My personal opinion is that Google faithfully counted the linkjuice when rel=canonical was first suggested "by Google" for attributing the source of republished articles.

However, I currently doubt that the linkjuice from cross-domain canonicals still carries the same value.  And, because some people have been using cross-domain rel=canonical at industrial scale, I am starting to believe that manipulative use of rel=canonical can result in the same problems that you would incur from building unnatural links.

I am not doing anything at industrial scale, but because of the above I am not going to use cross-domain rel=canonical in the future and have taken down some republished pages that have been in place for  a couple of years.

[manoman88]

Thanks EGL for your response.

Here is the situation, I have 2 websites for specific markets. The websites were doing good. I decided that it might be good to have the products of both websites on a single platform as I was seeking to focus the effort on a single website. However, after few years, I did realize that the newly created platform will never take over both specialized websites as these websites were pretty well ranked on Google
My issue is, currently, I do have duplucate content (products) on my new platform and I wonder if putting all the links of those products on Canonical could benefit the original specialized websites. The resultas on the platform is decreasing as my main focus is on the 2 websites that generates revenues.

Is there any purpose on doing so ? I mean putting canonical on the platform's urls ?

[EGOL]

I do have duplucate content (products) on my new platform and I wonder if putting all the links of those products on Canonical could benefit the original specialized websites.

Google has not said exactly how they treat these.

I believe that rel=canonical has become a substitute for the old method of building links by article syndication.  I believe that many people are doing it at industrial scale and that google will eventually start to discount the beneifits, ignore the benefits or penalize some uses of rel=canonical.

For that reason I am staying away from rel=canonical just like I stay away from dropping links in forums, buying links, linkwheels, syndicating articles, etc.  That's me being cautions and taking care of my websites.

Each person must decide what they are willing to do.  You can wait until Google publishes it in their webmaster guidelines or you can stop doing something that Google might simply refer to as "manipulation" without getting specific about it.  Google is specific about very few things.