Canonical to another website?

[CliffAuerswald]

I've recently noticed in my adwords campaigns that using exact match domains improves my quality scores so I've been snatching up all kinds of domains which include different keywords. On these new sites (which I only use to bring down my CPC) I've been tossing up a landing page, scraping some content form my main site and direct a canonical tag to my organic site so google doesnt penalize me for duplcant content. It is ok to use a canonicle to an outside website and Is there any precautions when doing this? I just want to be sure I'm not hurting my main site where we rank well organicly on and I was also wondering if any of these sub sites which also have links to my main site carry any vaue. Appreciate any feedback! -Cliff

[AlanMosley]

google has allowed this for a few months, but bing gives an violation
http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-canonical-url-is-in-a-different-domain

But, this may of changed also. if you set it up i can check if Bing Seo Toolkit still picks it up, so let me know the URL if you set it up

[RyanKent]

Alan, to the best of my knowledge the article you linked is not correct. It has been reported that Bing does support the cross domain canonical. http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-bing-support-cross-domain-canonical-tags

I like most of the setup of your article but if I can share two feedback items:

1. There is not date stamp on the article. Personally I disregard any SEO information without a date stamp. In my experience 100% of quality sites offer the date stamp.

2. There is no link to or mention of the source.

I could always be mistaken but I wanted to share the information for discussion.

[AlanMosley]

The souce is the Bing SEO Toolkit.

The site is mine, I add the violations as i find them, but it is hard to notice if they expire. I have been meaning to set up a test since I heard that google stated allowing cross domain canonicals.

The main reason i have them is for content.

If cliff sets one up. ill test it to make sure, if not ill set up my own test and remove it from the database, i will add a dates, good idea, I may even have them in the database already. that at least will show me that i have not picked one up for  a while.

[CliffAuerswald]

So cross canonical is reasonably acceptable do you think links that point to the other website have any value since there is a canonical or are they disregarded? Hopefully they're not treated as spam. Using the exact phrase domain has brought down my CPC nearly 50% I'm wanting to add another 20 or so domains in the same fashion. Thank you! -Cliff

[AlanMosley]

I tested your site with the Bing SEO Toolkit, and it does not bring up a violation as it used to, so you can say that neither Bing or Google have a problem iwth cross domain canonical