Definition

Content syndication is the practice of republishing a website's content — such as articles — on one or more other sites. Because this creates duplicate copies across domains, search engines must decide which version to show.

Google's current guidance is that the canonical link element is not recommended for syndication, because syndicated pages are often quite different from the original. Instead, Google says the most effective approach is for syndication partners to block indexing of the republished copy, for example with a noindex tag. This helps avoid the syndicated version competing with or outranking the original in Search.

Examples

• Wire article

  A news agency licenses an article to several outlets. To keep the original ranking, it asks each partner to add a noindex tag to their republished copy, following Google's syndication guidance.

• Republished blog post

  A company's blog post is syndicated to a partner site. Because both versions are indexable, Google may show the partner's copy instead of the original in some searches.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Fix canonicalization issues (syndication)
• Google Search Central Blog — Handling legitimate cross-domain content duplication

Related terms

• Duplicate Content
  Substantively identical or very similar content that appears at more than one URL, either within a single site or across different sites.
• Canonical Tag
  An HTML element that tells search engines which URL is the master copy when the same or similar content exists at multiple addresses.
• Noindex
  A robots directive that tells search engines not to include a page in their index, even if the URL is publicly reachable.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit
• Competitor Analysis