Multi-Country Duplicate Content
-
Hello,
We have an ecommerce site that serves several countries on the same .com domain - US, UK and CA. We have duplicate content across these countries because they are all English speaking so there is little variance in the pages and they each sell most of the same products. We have implemented hreflang into our sitemaps but we need to address the duplicate content. We were advised to canonicalize our UK and CA pages back to the duplicate US pages (our US pages account for the majority of our traffic and sales). This would cause the UK and CA pages to fall out of the index but the visitor would still be taken to the correct country's page due to the hreflang.
I'm leary about doing this because they are across countries. Is this ok to do? If not, how do we address the duplicate content since they are not on their own CCTLD's?
-
Kelli (sorry, I had the wrong name somehow?)
First let me clarify a few things.
- Is the content between the US, Canada, and UK the exact same but on different URLs?
- Is any of the content translated to cater to the different markets (spellings, word usage, etc.)?
- Does each country have the same product set, etc.?
The HREFLANG is not necessary unless you are changing the language in some way. I am not sure that is what you should be using here. But your answers will help me understand so I can tell you what to do.
Check out my tool here to help: http://www.katemorris.com/issg/
-
It is of course slightly harder to answer without seeing any examples. However, assuming that the canonicalisation of Products B & C is the right thing to do in the first place, then I'd suggest that you should be consistent with your canonicalisation.
So, if you're canonicalising Products B and C to Product A on the US site, you are asking Google "please don't deliver B and C in search results; deliver A instead". If you are to then start canonicalising UK content to B & C then, as you rightly point out, that creates a chain of canonicals. The purpose of canonicals is to help Google to identify the single page (within a group) that they should deliver to their users. So it wouldn't make sense to canonicalise to one page which then canonicalises to another, IMO.
As for having to use both the canonical and rel-alternate-hreflang attributes, I have to say I'm surprised. I read this and strangely there is no mention of the canonical - it seems to suggest that this is the solution you've been looking for! However, clearly that's not been your experience.
Perhaps a silly question - but have you checked that you have rel-alternate-hreflang has been implemented correctly? E.g. have you implemented on a page-by-page basis, as opposed to a site-level basis? From the Google thread:
"rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
is used as a page level, not a site level, and you need to mark up each set of pages, including the home page, as appropriate. You can specify as many content variations and language/regional clusters as you need." -
Here's another question, if we do canonicalize our UK and CA pages back to the corresponding US pages, how should we handle the following scenario where most of our products are in 'groups' meaning there are very slight variances, but they are the same product:
US Site
Product A - canonical
Product B - canonicalizes to A
Product C - canonicalizes to AUK Site
Product A - canonicalizes to US version of A
Product B - canonicalizes to US version of B - OR - canonicalizes to US version of A??
Product C - canonicalizes to US version of C - OR - canonicalizes to US version of A??With thousands of products, canonicalizing to the exact duplicate page may be much easier to implement, but there will be a chain of canonicals.
-
I used to think the same thing, but it seems that Google has been unclear on the effects of hreflang as to whether it addresses duplicate content because at one time they said to use hreflang together, then they crossed it off of their guidelines, now they say it's ok. Based on my research, I'm thinking it's ok to use together as long as the languages aren't different, for instance, variations of English is ok, but don't use it with English and Spanish together because they are completely different.
Here is a snippet from http://searchengineland.com/cutting-through-the-confusion-of-googles-guidance-to-multilingual-website-owners-113586 which reads:
The Effect Of Combining Canonical Tags & Hreflang Tags
Not forgetting that the canonical tags should only be used with content in the same language, when would we use both? Well firstly, the use of both would involve what I usually call world languages such as English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. These languages are used in many countries and, whilst there are variations between the use of these languages in those countries, the variations are sometimes small. A__dditionally, multinational publishers often save costs by using one version of the language for all countries speaking that general language, thus ignoring the regional variations. In other words, for Spain and Mexico, Google is presented with exactly the same content, letter for letter. The canonical acknowledges that this is the same content. The Hreflang tag identifies which URL should be displayed in different sets of results. So, in other words, canonical + Hreflang = same content + different URL. Google knows the content is the same, but displays the correct URL for the Google domain search (e.g. google.com.mx will see the relevant URLs for Mexico displayed in the results).
This is also another good article from Distilled: http://www.distilled.net/blog/distilled/distilledlive-london-a-few-thoughts-on-hreflang/
Also, when a page canonicalizes to another page, it eventually drops out of the 'Duplicate Meta Descriptions' area of Google Webmaster Tools. We have had the hreflang implemented for some time, and none of the 'cross-country' pages are dropping out.
-
I thought that the whole point of rel-alternate-hreflang was to deal with the duplication of content when delivering the same or similar content to users in different locales.
For example, you have two sites - 1. US example.com and 2. UK example.co.uk. You sell the same products in both countries and the content on the sites is exactly the same. So there are two sites with exactly the same content, but the currency and delivery information etc is different.
If you implement on the .com site and on the .co.uk site, that means you don't need to implement the canonical tag.
At least that's how I understand this - I don't see the point of hreflang if you start having to mess around with canonicals etc.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Targeting Countries in the Middle East
Hi guys, I have a client based in the Middle East using a generic top level domain (.com), and they want to target multiple countries in the GCC (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar etc). I’m thinking that using the hreflang tag would be the best solution here, however the pages will mostly have the exact same content. There will only be slight changes on some pages in terms of using localised title tags [client service] followed by [targeted country], h1's and meta descriptions. Is this the correct approach? And if so should this be implemented side wide or can it be implemented on selected pages only? The site will be in English only.
International SEO | | Jbeetle0 -
Country subfolders showing as sitelinks in Google, country targeting for home page no longer working
Hi There, Just wondering if you can help. Our site has 3 region versions (General .com, /ie/ for Ireland and /gb/ for UK), each submitted to Google Webmaster Tools as seperate sites with hreflang tags in the head section of all pages. Google was showing the correct results for a few weeks, but I resubmitted the home pages with slight text changes last week and something strange happened, though it may have been coincidental timing. When we search for the brand name in google.ie or google.co.uk, the .com now shows as the main site, where the sitelinks still show the correct country versions. However, the country subdirectories are now appearing as sitelinks, which is likely causing the problem. I have demoted these on GWT, but unsure as to whether that will work and it seems to take a while for sitelink demotion to work. Has anyone had anything similar happen? I thought perhaps it was a markup issue breaking the head section so that Google can no longer see the hreflangs pointing to each other as alternates. I checked the source code in w3 validator and it doesn't show any errors. Anyway, any help would be much appreciated - and thanks to anyone who gets back, it's a tricky type of issue to troubleshoot. Thanks, Ro
International SEO | | romh0 -
URL Structure - Homepage, Country and State Pages
Hello, I am creating a website (or websites if best format) that will have state-specific boating license courses for every state in the US, Canada and Australia. I would like the content to be available on the website in English, French and Spanish. I want to be the global leader in providing boat test courses. For the (1) homepage, (2) country pages, and (3) state pages, what is best SEO format I should use for:
International SEO | | Monologix
(a) URL structure
(b) "href lang" code
(c) rel canonical code
(d) will meta content with non-English pages need to also be in the non-English language of that page? Also, what server company do you recommend I host my website with? I am a non-programmer and learning SEO, so any and all help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much in advance!!!0 -
Google Webmaster tools localization for double country
Hi, I have the following url structure in my webshop: www.example.com/nl www.example.com/de www.example.com/fr www.example.com/uk I have set up each local store in Google Webmaster Tools with the correct localization.
International SEO | | mikehenze
But for the Belgium market i dont have a seperate site. Half of them speak dutch (nl) and half of them speak french (fr). Will Google show the correct site (nl or fr) based on their language? Or will my sites not show up because belgium is not being used in my GWT ? Thanks.0 -
Homepage URL for multi-language site
Hi, We are setting up a new site, and currently considering the URL and folder structure of the site. We will have 2-3 different language versions, and we have decided to use sub folders for this. My question is regarding the homepage URL. We want the English language site (en) to be the default one, from where you can then change the language. Should I have a folder for each of the language versions (as described below)? www.mydomain.com/en
International SEO | | Awaraman
(this would be the default page where everyone would always come if they type www.mydomain.com to webrowser) www,mydomain.com/ru www.mydomain.com/es Or, would it be better for SEO to have www.mydomain.com as the default URL where we would have the English version of the site, and then have two other folders (as below) where we would have the 2 other language versions: www,mydomain.com/ru www.mydomain.com/es Thank you in advance, BR Sam0 -
Multi Regional website - Folder strategy
Hello Seomoz people ! I've been struggling for some time now with an international website project. It's gonna be an:international website with joomla. To sum up: We have an international company The company has 13 subsidiaries worldwide (same products, different names) The company doesn't have enough resources to get 13 independent websites Some subsidiaries work in one country / one language, some others on a region (several countries, several languages) Thanks to your community we decided to: Get a main website company.com Get subsidiaries folders (middle east, oceania and south america will be easier to link to their subsidiary) .com/asia .com/middle-east .com/oceania .com/south-america .com/uk .com/usa .com/fr .com/es .com/de .com/ma .com/dz .com/it We also need to: Get some websites in different languages .com/asia-cn .com/asia-en etc. Now how do we do to manage: Regional websites (the first 4th on the upper list) Google allows to affect a website to a country not region Will they compete with the .com ? How do we set up them for google ? How do we avoid duplicate content and keep local ranking .com/asia-en/services1.html will have the exact same content that_.com/services1.html_ If we use canonical from _.com/asia-en/services1.htm_l to _.com/services1.html , d_oes that mean /asia will not rank in asia ? Hope you can help us to figure us the best solution for this good project ! Thanks a lot. Florian
International SEO | | AymanH1 -
Same website in different countries, best practices for SEO?
Hey Guys, I have read several similar questions regarding mine, but none seem to truly cover my question. Basically, we have a company named Junair. We created the website for the company here in Australia (http://www.junair.com.au). As can be seen throughout the page, it mentions that it caters for both Australia and NZ (NZ has its own phone number). It does ok in the rankings at the moment, but rankings will continue to rise in the future once more links are getting picked up. Now however, the Junair team in NZ purchased the NZ domain http://www.junair.co.nz and redirected it to the Australian page. No matter which page you visit on the NZ URL, the URL will never change, and neither will the page title. They have now contacted us and asked to perform SEO on the NZ domain so the NZ domain would show up in searches on Google NZ. At the moment, when searching for "Junair" on google.co.nz, the Australian domain is coming up. How could I change this so the NZ URL would show instead? And what would be the best practices to perform SEO on the NZ URL, should I just create links pointing to http://www.junair.co.nz ? Thank you, Roderic
International SEO | | Michael-Goode0 -
Targeting Different Countries... One Site or Separate?
I have a client who has 3 ecommerce sites. They are somewhat differentiated but for the most part sell the same stuff. Luckily 2 of them are quite authoritative, old and rank reasonably well. Most of the visitors and sales come from the US. He wants to start targeting Europe, Mexico and Canada. What are your suggestions for doing this? Are we better targeting on the main domains? Not really sure how to do that? Should we use a subdomain and a new store front for each geo? Should we use a .co.uk .co.mx and .co.ca each with a unique storefront? It looks like we are moving to a Magento platform so setting up multiple storefronts on a single database is not a big issue. Anyone have any experience with this?
International SEO | | BlinkWeb0