Syndication-source and original-source are two new meta tags for news articles that Google began using in 2010. Using these tags, news curators can publish another site’s articles on their own site, without worrying about getting penalized by Google for duplicate or plagiarism content.
Syndication-source tags identify a copy of another site’s original article that is very close or exact. It was then possible for Google to include the original article URL instead of the copied one in Google News.
<meta name=”syndication-source” content=”http://www.heard-it-here-second.com/story.html”>
Google could identify the original news story and display it as part of the News search results when it used the original-source tag. If an article uses information from several other sources, it could use original-source tags to cite its sources.
<meta name=”original-source” content=”http:///www.breakingnews.com/latest_story_1.html>
In 2011, the rel=canonical attribute overtook these tags as the preferred method for avoiding duplicate content issues. It was announced late in 2011 that Google deemed the rel=canonical tag (which performs a similar function to the original-source tag) the best way to distinguish between duplicate and original content.
It was revealed in 2012 that syndication-source tags were depreciated by the Google News team. The resolution of duplicate content articles depends now on rel=canonical and the noindex or disallow meta tags.
