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I have a situation that I do not fully understand, related to syndicated content. My site - where the original version of my articles is being published, is being seen by Google not as the original/canonical version. Instead, the site that is syndicating the content is seen as the original version.

This doesn't look to be a simple case of both versions are valid, but the syndicated site is just better promoted, but that it's actually the original version, for several articles.

For example:

The syndicated version is on 3rd place, my own content doesn't appear in the first 100 results.

The website that syndicates my content does have a link back to my article; it also has the date on the article page, but it looks like this is the updated date, not the published date:
<span class="date updated">May 7th, 2013</span>

On my website, the date looks like this: <abbr title="2013-05-01T16:13:14+0000" class="date time published">May 1, 2013</abbr>

Should the syndicating site also use proper timestamps and a publish date? Can this be the reason Google picks it up as the original version? Also, is there any way to fix this problem?

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The reason is merely because your articles may be hosted on an authoritative domain. You can host an article on your website and on Wikipedia. You shall see that the Wikipedia article ranks higher. This is what we call domain name authority.

Give it some time for Google to figure out the original content. Meanwhile keep building authority backlinks to your article, and it shall soon rise in rankings.

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  • Not sure this is the case - the reason is that sometimes, my article as well as the syndicated version ranks in the top 10 (for example: google.com/search?q=spring+rest+api+security) - this time, the syndicated version ranks in the first 10 results, while my article is nowhere in the first 100.
    – Eugen
    Commented May 14, 2013 at 12:11
  • Your article may rank higher with the Caffeine update. Whereas in other cases the syndication may rank higher because of higher authority. They already have plenty of pages indexed, and hence may pose an authoritative figure to Google. Are you sure that your articles are even indexed ?
    – Robin Thomas
    Commented May 14, 2013 at 13:54
  • The Caffeine update looks to have been launched a long time ago, so it may not help. Also, yes, I am sure that my articles are being indexed.
    – Eugen
    Commented May 14, 2013 at 14:08
  • Give it some time. Meanwhile build quality links to your articles. It should rank well.
    – Robin Thomas
    Commented May 14, 2013 at 14:43

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