XF 2.1 Set Canonical URL for individual threads in Xenforo that point to content posted on Medium?

[tomwood]

I set up a forum node in Xenforo that contains individual threads - each thread is titled with the title of a specific short story to be posted at the Medium website. The Xenforo thread does not contain the content, I just want to post a link that goes to the content at Medium. I'll be promoting the Medium URL, so it needs to be the canonical URL. I've noticed already that Google has indexed the Xenforo thread, and since I haven't published on Medium yet, the Xenforo thread will take precedence.

tl:dr - Is there a way to tell search engines that a specific Xenforo thread is NOT the canonical URL?

 

[arn]

This is probably not something you want to use canonical for. Google will probably ignore it.

If you don't want the threads indexed, you could no-index them. I don't think canonical will work -- or at least, predictably.

I'll bet when you publish the medium posts, it will outrank the forum threads.

 

[tomwood]

I think I've changed my mind on this. The Xenforo thread will actually contain a special link to the content at Medium that bypasses the Medium paywall. They provide authors with that special link so we can use it in social media (and our websites) to send traffic to the article, and by extension, to Medium. I -think- I'd want the Xenforo thread to take precedence in search results since I want the widest possible reach to readers. Medium provides a way to insert the canonical attribute, so I think it should point at the Xenforo thread. I doubt there will be many searches on the titles since they are science fiction and not likely something people would enter in a search field, so this may all be moot.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Canonical are supposed to be for actual duplicate content, not just duplicate titles.