Cross domain canonical on a mass scale

[jnelson563]

Has anybody ever implemented a cross domain canonical across thousands of pages? If so, what were your results like?

Let's say I have 2 sites that sell the same products but one is for a general audience and one more specialized. What ends up happening is that it's basically a toss-up on what page is returned by Google for a search.

Would there be any negatives associated with performing a mass-canonical to update my site of 10k products to point to the main site's product pages?

[tedster]

Google will treat the mass canonical very much like a 301 redirect. That means your specialized domain will probably lose search traffic. Whether that is a net negative or not only you can decide.

[jnelson563]

This is to be expected, and I would expect traffic to the main site to increase.

I am just hoping there's no lag time between those two events.

I'm also wondering if it would be better to 301 redirect Googlebot and Bingbot to the main site product pages instead of doing a canonical. Not sure if that would qualify as cloaking or what though. I mean, technically it does help our users because hardly anybody wants to land on the specialized site even though there's no real difference other than the ordering process which is gated anyway.

[tedster]

If you redirect the bots but not other user-agents, then yes, that is cloaking.

[jnelson563]

I appreciate your responses Tedster, thank you. It seems so black and white. Are you telling me this would be frowned upon?

If the bots are redirected, then the SERPs would be updated with the desired URLs, helping users also land on the correct pages. I wouldn't want to redirect users who actually want to view product pages on the specialized site (who only arrive at the site via direct traffic or through email blasts), which is why i would only be redirecting bots. i don't see how this could be a negative.

I suppose I am better off sticking with canonical then if there is a chance that user-agent redirects could get me penalized.