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:
- my article: http://www.baeldung.com/spring-security-login
- the syndicated article: http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2013/05/spring-security-login.html
- the search: https://www.google.com/search?q=+spring+security+login
The syndicated version is on 3rd place, my own content doesn't appear in the first 100 results.
The site 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 site, 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?
Thanks.
Eugen.