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I have some content from a different website, and I want to tell google that. The content I have are mostly snippets of text and/or reviews.

I have setup a canonical link in the head of the page pointing to the website with the content, but I'm not sure that's the best idea. I'm afraid that would tell google that all content is from the 3rd party website.

My main reason is that I'm trying to avoid duplicate content, and/or google indexing the 3rd party content on my website with a higher index.

Any ideas?

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  • Canonical URLs is exactly what you should be using. Just do it on a page-by-page basis where the content is duplicated.
    – John Conde
    Jan 9, 2017 at 16:09
  • @JohnConde ...I'm afraid that would tell google that all content is from the 3rd party website.... Jan 9, 2017 at 16:10
  • Not if you have canonical tags on only the pages that are actually duplicated.
    – John Conde
    Jan 9, 2017 at 16:11
  • @JohnConde on top of a canonical link, what about a way to tell google that individual spinets of text belong to a different website? Jan 9, 2017 at 16:12

1 Answer 1

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There are specific elements of HTML to handle this situation. Using canonical to indicate that your page contains much content from another web would literally make your page undiscoverable through Google.

Blockquote + cite

The blockquote element represents content that is quoted from another source, optionally with a citation which must be within a footer or cite element, and optionally with in-line changes such as annotations and abbreviations.

The cite element represents a reference to a creative work. It must include the title of the work or the name of the author (person, people or organization) or an URL reference, or a reference in abbreviated form as per the conventions used for the addition of citation metadata.

Use the cite element to give proper attribution of the text to an author and a link to the author or source.

<blockquote>
  The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their
  soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.
  — <cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse">Herbert Marcuse</a></cite>
</blockquote>

q + cite

The q element represents some phrasing content quoted from another source.

Explicit citation link in and outside the q element:

<p>The W3C page <cite>About W3C</cite> says the W3C’s
mission is <q cite="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/">To lead the
World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and
guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web</q>. I
disagree with this mission.</p>

Examples and citations are from HTML5 specification: blockquote, q.

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