Rel canonical element for different URL's

[GravitateOnline]

Hello,

We have a new client that has several sites with the exact same content. They do this for tracking purposes. We are facing political objections to combine and track differently. Basically, we have no choice but to deal with the situation given. We want to avoid duplicate content issues, and want to SEO only one of the sites. The other sites don't really matter for SEO (they have off-line campaigns pointing to them) we just want one of the sites to get all the credit for the content.

My questions:

1. Can we use the rel canonical element on the irrelevent pages/URL's to point to the site we care about? I think I remember Matt Cutts saying this can't be done across URL's. Am I right or wrong?

2. If we can't, what options do I have (without making the client change their entire tracking strategy) to make the site we are SEO'ing the relevant content?

Thanks a million!

Todd

[DanDeceuster]

I believe you can canonical tag other domains. This came up in Google news not to long ago about making a tag that refers to the original author or something.

I would make a robots.txt file for each copied domain and block the domain. Then I would put a noindex tag on every page of those domains. Get them away from Google's index that way so the only version of your content they keep is the one you want to rank.

[Tom-Anthony]

I would differ slightly in my approach. If you robots.txt block the other sites, then any organic links they build up will be worthless.

Rel canonical across domains should be fine, so put that in place. Then meta noindex, follow: this way the juice flows in at least. Make sure the rel=canonicals go to the same specific page on the duplicate, obviously.

[GravitateOnline]

Daniel and Tom- Thanks a million! I'll take your advice and use the cross url rel canonical element. I wasn't sure if it would work- but based on your input I did some searches and found Google's response to Matt Cutts original statement about not working across urls- and it looks like Google decided to support it, just as you said. Here is the link I tracked down:

Google Webmaster Blog- Rel Canonical across domains

Thanks again guys!