Medium has to be one of the most disjointed platforms I’ve ever used.
Their import tool recently stopped working, inexplicably, simply throwing this error, with no further explanation:
Without the import tool, it’s impossible to set a canonical link back to the original source of the content (which should definitely be your own blog) – risking duplicate content SEO penalties etc…
I emailed support, who are notoriously awful. Eventually I got a reply, asking to email them the canonical link, and they’d add it for me:
I dutifully did that, and sure enough, the canonical link was added.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I’m trying to repeat the process – the import tool still broken, I posted my latest post on my own site (alexjamesbrown.com)
I then painstakingly copy-pasted it to Medium, and published.
As they confirmed in previous correspondence, I then emailed them to add the canonical link back to my blog:
However this time, I entered into a merry-go-round of incompetent support staff, stating “there was no way to do this” – despite them literally requesting me to do this!
I reminded them of what they previously asked me to do, but got another templated reply, at which point, I’ve resigned to the fact their support staff are utterly incompetent.
I won’t bother posting on medium any more.