Canonicalisation - different languages and channels
-
Hi
If the same content is placed on different URL's for the purposes of providing information on different channels (i.e mobiles), or has been translated into a different language (but is still the same content), do the serach engines still count this as duplicate content and will a canonical URL have to be tagged in these instances?
Thanks in advance for your assistance.
-
The problem with serving content for different channels is that crawlers read 2 pieces of the same content and can penalize you. There a few workarounds for that.One is obviously the fact that you can add a rel=canonical tag, but if you are serving same content due to only channels, it may pose an issue.
Example: if your webpage URL is www.mywebsite.com/abc (which can be accessed via navigational links on your website) and you have a url www.mywebsite.com/xyz which you use for mobiles, PPC or any other channel, but both having the same content, it will cause problems.
The way to deal with such issues is adding parameters (campaign id, etc) to 1 URL to tell google that you are using this version of the page(the one with campaign id) for some specific channel.
If you are making your website ready for the mobile, the best way is to tackle is to write device detection codes in your htaccess file.
It may look something like this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.iPad.$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://ipad.mydomain.com [R=301]
If you are serving content in different languages, then it shouldnt be much of a problem (generally speaking)
-
Hi - in general, yes, it's best to use something like the rel=canonical tag (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps) or to specifically tag mobile content as such - http://searchengineland.com/dont-penalize-yourself-mobile-sites-are-not-duplicate-content-40380
If it's translated to different languages, you're in the clear - that's considered substantively unique content and not subject to duplicate filtering (at least, 99% of the time).
Happy to help - great to have you in PRO!
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
-
What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?
i have seen some 301 redirects on my site billsonline, can anyone please explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects, i have read some articles where the writer was stating that 301 are not good for website.
Technical SEO | | aliho0 -
Cross domain canonical for different branded sites
Hi everyone, We are working on 5 websites that offer the same products but are of different brands and locations. They are owned by the same company, but each run independently. On the sites, they have content such as privacy policies, terms and conditions and guides that are the same across all brands. Will publishing these be flagged as duplicate content by Google? If yes, is it recommended to add rel=canonical to all duplicate pages across all sites pointing to one of the five? We are just concerned that the 4 sites with duplicate content would be valued less than the canonical as a result of passed link equity. We are doing SEO optimisations for all and are trying to rank them well in SERPs. If a canonical is not the best solution here, what would be the best to do apart from completely rewriting content? Is it noindex tag or turning the texts into images and adding to PDFs? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | nhhernandez1 -
Hreflang for multple countries but single language
I'm working on a site that has implemented hreflang. The site is all in English but has slight differences and breaks down to separate domains, so example.co.uk example.eu example.com the hreflang implementation targets specific countries per domain. This was tested using http://flang.dejanseo.com.au but Webmaster Tools has thrown up errors. For example, **URLs for your site and alternative URLs in 'en_GB' that do not have return tags. **But every page refers back.Any ideas what's going wrong?
Technical SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Google Cache showing a different URL
Hi all, very weird things happening to us. For the 3 URLs below, Google cache is rendering content from a different URL (sister site) even though there are no redirects between the 2 & live page shows the 'right content' - see: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://giltedgeafrica.com/tours/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://giltedgeafrica.com/about/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://giltedgeafrica.com/about/team/ We also have the exact same issue with another domain we owned (but not anymore), only difference is that we 301 redirected those URLs before it changed ownership: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.preferredsafaris.com/Kenya/2 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.preferredsafaris.com/accommodation/Namibia/5 I have gone ahead into the URL removal Tool and got denied for the first case above ("") and it is still pending for the second lists. We are worried that this might be a sign of duplicate content & could be penalising us. Thanks! ps: I went through most questions & the closest one I found was this one (http://moz.com/community/q/page-disappeared-from-google-index-google-cache-shows-page-is-being-redirected) but it didn't provide a clear answer on my question above
Technical SEO | | SouthernAfricaTravel0 -
.co.uk/index.html or just .co.uk - my on-page reports are different for both - why?
It looks like the same thing, yet it has a different on-page report for each version - why is this. Please share your ideas with me on this. The original url is http://bath.waspkilluk.co.uk/index.html. Many Thanks - Simon.
Technical SEO | | simonberenyi0 -
Why does google show two different titles for my rankings?
I have two keywords I am ranked for but google is showing two different title tags. One is the more updated version while the other is the older version. In all in one seo pack it shows the updated title tag but google still shows the old Why is this?
Technical SEO | | junkcars0 -
Why am i receiving two different speed reports for my site
Hi i am a bit puzzled. i am optimizing my site to speed it up but i am getting two different speed reports. my site is www.in2town.co.uk and the two speed websites i am using are http://tools.pingdom.com and http://gtmetrix.com Can anyone please let me know what results they are getting for my site with the two above tools and also why i am getting two different results. the other day before i made some changes, i was getting on average 2 seconds for loading speed, but at the moment, sometimes i am getting seven seconds and then when i test it again it goes down to three seconds or below. Also, does anyone know how i can test to make sure that my site is faster when you go from one page to another on my site. I am not getting the true loading experience on my site from one page to another because good old virgin are updating their broadband in our area and we have also had voltage problem, whatever this means on our broadband box outside on our street which they claim they have sorted. any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Webmaster tools lists a large number (hundreds)of different domains linking to my website, but only a few are reported on SEOMoz. Please explain what's going on?
Google's webmaster tools lists hundreds of links to my site, but SEOMoz only reports a few of them. I don't understand why that would be. Can anybody explain it to me? Is there someplace to I can go to alert SEOMoz to this issue?
Technical SEO | | dnfealkoff0