Google To Go Alongside Suggestions From Publishers Round Canonical vs Noindex For Syndication Companions

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said he would take the feedback he heard from the publisher community yesterday back to the Google Search team. This feedback was around Google’s advice on using the noindex for syndication partners anus removing the canonical advice from its docs a while back.

The canonical change, where Google said don’t use canonicals for syndication partners is from a few months ago, but the backlash around this advice spiked yesterday when I covered Danny’s presentation on how these syndication partners should be told to use noindex over canonical. You can read that advice over here.

But some big SEO news publishers got pretty vocal yesterday, which lead Danny Sullivan to say he will bring that feedback back to the Google team.

The feedback was primarily two-fold:

(1) Google should know better and be able to figure out who is the source and who is the syndicated partner. Heck, Google can detect cancer with AI, Google can do a lot but not figure out the original source?

(2) Google’s advice was originally to use canonical for syndicated providers (Google may argue this) and to get these partners to use noindex is a huge ask. It will require new contracts, and a noindex is much stronger, telling Google not to index the content that the syndicated partner is licensing.

Google’s stance is, it’s your choice, if you produce content and you want it to rank and monetize based on traffic, then don’t syndicate. If you want to make money syndicating your content, then do that.

Here are some tweets:

Really?!? Google essentially saying, “we know we’ve done a poor job in the past, and it’s too hard to fix. Maybe stop syndicating.”

— Jeremy Kaplan (@SmashDawg) July 10, 2023

I have to agree with @rudythesnowman. I worked on multiple syndication agreements and just asking for canonical tags was a hassle. You hear all kinds of executions mainly technical. Most of the time publishers settle for what they can get to generate some additional revenue.

— John Shehata (@JShehata) July 10, 2023

The guidance is clear.

Your guidance is naive and damaging to publishers.

Didn’t think you’d find an example on Yahoo as it very likely doesn’t exist.

— Thomas Rudy (@rudythesnowman) July 10, 2023

The thing that galls me the most about the syndicated content issue is how Google has gaslit us into making it our problem.

Yet it’s Google that can’t detect perfect copies of original articles nor honor canonicals.

Once again the web has to conform to Google, not vice versa. https://t.co/v0Jq510RPP

— Barry Adams 📰 (@badams) July 11, 2023

So John Shehata proposed:

What would be the goal of this? To prevent the page from being indexed? If so, and of you believe a publisher can’t convince a partner to use noindex, why do you think that would help?

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 10, 2023

It’s not like we don’t consider canonical. It’s just not as effective as noindex, which has been our guidance for news for years. That said, sure, I’ll pass it on.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 10, 2023

So Danny will pass it on but not too fast, canonical might not be the answer:

And to be clear, it almost certainly wouldn’t be to consider cross-domain canonical as noindex because that could get very messy. noindex exist for the purpose. But we could look at ways to improve canonical. That said, it shouldn’t be dependent on (which again is why our guidance…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 10, 2023

Glenn Gabe also explained why he thinks this is kind of insane:

For example from 2018: “When we look at pages, we try to split them up into different parts and we try to recognize the boilerplate. Then we can recognize which part of a page is actually relevant & focus on the content that’s actually changing. ..” https://t.co/N8TAx6IjNS pic.twitter.com/YrkQIpbAYK

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) July 11, 2023

And there are more videos I can share explaining the same thing… So Google is telling me they can’t determine the primary content, understand it’s the same, and then handle correctly (esp. with rel canonical being used)? Right…… 🙂 pic.twitter.com/xddsgdch6m

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) July 11, 2023

Do you think Google will come back with an alternative solution for syndicated content?

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Update: After I published this, Danny Sullivan posted more about this on Twitter:

We did align the advice to *partners* to match what we told publishers for News & the same for Search generally. But most people raising this issue about syndicated content have been concerned about news, have been publishers making the agreements, and noindex has been the advice

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 11, 2023

Appreciated & noted some might be using canonical in agreements despite our long-standing to use noindex. But the goal is the same. If you requested canonical from a partner, both sides would have understood the goal was for the syndicated page carrying it not to rank…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 11, 2023

The only reason to use canonical is that it’s not perfect (which is why it’s not advised) & maybe syndicated content has chance to rank That’s a choice publishers can make for whatever reasons they might have. Just not the advised solution if they have concerns about ranking.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 11, 2023

Finally, news SEOs seem often asked to solve a ranking issue with syndicated content even though the advice they give perhaps isn’t followed? So hopefully it helps we’re clear. It’s noindex & if agreements don’t use that, it’s not something the SEO can magically solve. +1 to this https://t.co/sIxFd04k4e

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 11, 2023