What to Do When Canonical Links Go Wrong

A person recently sent a company article to a Medium publication entitled, "Toward Data Science." Using the publisher's advanced tools, they set the canonical link to point back to the original story. This person is frustrated that the Toward Data Science article outranks the original article when a person does a Google search. This person thought that the links were supposed to tell the search engine which article is the authoritative version. This individual wanted to know if there is any way to improve the situation.

One person replied and said that the canonical URL is basically just a hint to Google and other search engines. It is just one of many considerations or algorithm components that it uses when ranking a website. If the Toward Data Science site gets more visitors who spend more time than the site that first had the story, it will rank better.

Several people wrote back and confirmed this first respondent's information. These others said that relying on a cross-domain canonical link is not the best way to get a better search engine ranking. These people added that Google often simply ignores the canonical URL, especially if a site has high domain authority.

Someone else suggested creating an article summary with a few paragraphs of text to have on the Toward Data Science page. The summary would include a "To read more, click here..." link to the original page with the article on it. This would divert traffic to the original site, leading to a better site rank and a corresponding increase in domain authority.

Another person added that it is a known Google problem. The original poster would have to weigh the exposure on a high-authority site against a loss of some traffic on their own site. This person thinks that the name recognition provided by the high domain authority website could be a good trade-off for the original poster. This person added that the longer a content owner waits to publish information on a high-authority domain, the better the chance they have at getting a great ranking on the original/first site. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/elvi6q/mediumpostisrankedhigherthanthe_original/.