Google Ignoring The rel=canonical For Syndication Partners?

So we just covered that Google said the best approach is to force your syndication partners to use the rel=canonical attribute to point to the content they distributed from your site. But Glenn Gabe said on Twitter he has seen Google not honoring that.

First, here is the Google statement – note that Google did say “it doesn’t guarantee only one version is shown though.”

For syndication, using rel=canonical is the best approach (it doesn’t guarantee only one version is shown though). For internationalization, use hreflang instead.

— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) December 2, 2019

Here is Glenn’s tweet:

Another warning if you are syndicating content. Analyzing a site hit by the 11/8 update & found many syndicated articles CORRECTLY USING REL CANONICAL that were still indexed. Yep, Google is ignoring rel canonical… Bad for the site & bad for the partners. Site is addressing now pic.twitter.com/hlLfEH6LRc

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 27, 2019

Here is a bit more:

That’s not right. Google can absolutely ignore rel canonical if the content isn’t the same, but this is the exact same article word for word. Cross domain canonical is the recommended solution for handling syndicated content (beyond just noindexing the content). So this is wrong.

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 28, 2019

So while Google says you should make the syndication partner use the rel=canonical – Google admits it might not just list your content, but might list the partner and here is Glenn Gabe showing Google ignoring the rel=canonical tag completely anyway?

Forum discussion at Twitter.