Google explains why syndicators may outrank original publishers

Last week we reported that Google has updated its algorithms to give original reporting preferred ranking in Google search. So when John Shehata, VP of Audience Growth at Condé Nast, a major publishing company, posted on Twitter that Yahoo is outranking the original source of the article, Google took notice.

The complaint. Shehata posted on Twitter, “Recently I see a lot of instances where Google Top Stories ranking syndicated content from Yahoo above or instead of original content. This is disturbing especially for publishers. Yahoo has no canonicals back to original content but sometimes they link back.”

As you can see, he provided screen shots of this happening as evidence.

No canonical. John also mentioned that Yahoo, who is legally syndicating the content on behalf of Conde Nast, is not using a canonical tag to point back to the original source. Google’s recommendation for those allowing others to syndicate content is to have a clause requiring syndicators must use the canonical tag to point back to the source the site is syndicating from. Using this canonical tag indicate to Google which article page is the original source.

The issue. Sometimes those who license content, the syndicators, post the content before or at the same time as the source they are syndicating it from. That makes it hard for Google or other search engines to know which is the original source. That is why Google wrote, “Publishers that allow others to republish content can help ensure that their original versions perform better in Google News by asking those republishing to block or make use of canonical. Google News also encourages those that republish material to consider proactively blocking such content or making use of the canonical, so that we can better identify the original content and credit it appropriately.”

Google’s response. Google Search Liason Danny Sullivan responded on Twitter: “If people deliberately chose to syndicate their content, it makes it difficult to identify the originating source. That’s why we recommend the use of canonical or blocking. The publishers syndicating can require this.”

This affects both web and News results, Sullivan said. In fact, th original reporting algorithm update has not yet rolled out to Google News, it is just for web search currently:

Solution. If you allow people to syndicate your content, you should require them to use the canonical tag or make them block Google from indexing that content. Otherwise, do not always expect Google to be able to figure out where the article originated from, espesially when your syndication partners publish the story before or at the same time that you publish your story.

Why we care. While the original reporting change is interesting in this case, it is somewhat unrelated. If the same article is published on two different sites at the same time, both sites can appear to the search engines as the original source. If these sites are syndicating your content legally, review or update your contracts to require syndicators to either use canonical tags or block their syndicated content from indexing altogether. If syndicators are stealing your content and outranking you, Google should be better at dealing with that algorithmically, otherwise, you can file a DMCA takedown request with Google.