Duplicate content on subdomains.

[HiteshBharucha]

Hi Mozer's,

I have a site www.xyz.com and also geo targeted sub domains www.uk.xyz.com, www.india.xyz.com and so on. All the sub domains have the content which is same as the content on the main domain that is www.xyz.com.

So, I want to know how can i avoid content duplication.

Many Thanks!

[Dr-Pete]

It would probably be better (and more likely to get you responses) if you started a new question - this one is three years old. Generally, I think it depends on your scope. If you need some kind of separation (corporate, legal, technical), then separate domains or sub-domains may make sense. They're also easier to target, in some ways. However, you're right that authority may be diluted and you'll need more marketing effort against each one.

If resources are limited and you don't need each country to be a fully separate entity, then you'll probably have less headaches with sub-folders. I'm speaking in broad generalities, though - this is a big decision that depends a lot on the details.

[UpMedio_SEO]

Dear all,

I have bought 30 geo top level domains. This is for an ecommerce project that has not launcehd yet (and isn't indexed by Google).

I am now at a point where I can change/consolidate all domains as sub domains or sub folders or keep things as they are.

I just worry that link building  would be scattered and not focused and that it might be better to concentrate the efforts on one domain.

What are your views on this?

Many thanks.

[Dr-Pete]

Yeah - I'm really afraid that stacking all those sub-domains is going to cause you long-term issues with your link-building, and that some of those sub-domains could fragment. If the country needs to be in a sub-domain, then I think the hybrid approach (with "/shop" as a sub-folder) may cause you less trouble.

I will warn, though, that any change like this carries some risk. You'll have to put proper 301-redirects in place.

I might try the href lang tags first, though, and see if it helps the current problem (it may take a few weeks). Changing too many aspects of the on-page SEO at once could cause you a lot of grief.

[HiteshBharucha]

shop. pages are simply new pages which are added for products to be sold with ease. I think that i might move shop.uk.xyz.com pages to uk.xyz.com/shop/product as in a sub folder. Do you think this will help in passing on the link juice to those pages after the change and would be easy for me to include them in the sitemap as well??

[Dr-Pete]

If you have separate GWT profiles, then I think the XML sitemap may have to be under the sub-domain - Google has to be able to access it from a sub-domain URL. It doesn't have to be in the root of the sub-domain.

I'm not clear on what the "shop." pages are, but stacking sub-domains like that sounds like it's getting pretty messy. Why the separation?

[HiteshBharucha]

I have already created separate profiles for the subdomains, but my only worry is where to place the sitemap on the server eg in the root directory of the root domain or in the root directory of the sub domain.

Coming to the (2) the pages which i want to include in the site map are my product pages. so want to know if shop.uk.xyz.com can be included in the sitemap which will be for uk.xyz.com and also if does that count as a internal page of uk.xyz.com

[Dr-Pete]

It is probably best to create separate profiles in Google Webmaster Tools, because then you can target the sub-domains to the countries in question. At that point, you could also set up separate sitemaps. It'll give you a cleaner view of how each sub-domain is indexed and ranking.

I'm not sure I understand (2) - why wouldn't you include those pages in the sitemap?

[HiteshBharucha]

Thank you for your inputs. I has relly helped me understand the situation.

I will try to implement this and let you know how I have done on this. Also I had few more things on this:

1. do i require a separate sitemap and robots file for all the sub domains and where shall i place it on the server?

2. in the sub domain there are pages like shop.uk.xyz.com/product1. so can i include that in the sitemaps as those are the pages which i really want to rank for.

[Dr-Pete]

There's no perfect answer. Canonical tags would keep the sub-domains from ranking, in many cases. The cross-TLD stuff is weird, though - Google can, in some cases, ignore the canonical if they think that one sub-domain is more appropriate for the country/ccTLD the searcher is using.

Sub-domains can be tricky in and of themselves, unfortunately, because they sometimes fragment and don't pass link "juice" fully to the root domain. I generally still think sub-folders are better for cases like this, but obviously that would be a big change (and potentially risky).

You could try the rel="alternate" hreflang tags. They're similar to canonical (a bit weaker), but basically are designed to handle the same content in different languages and regions:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

They're basically designed for exactly this problem. You can set the root domain to "en-US", the UK sub-domain to "en-UK", etc. I've heard generally good things, and they're low-risk, but you have to try it and see. They can be a little tricky to implement properly.

[DarinPirkey]

No, 301 and canonicals are completely different

A 301 will redirect a page and a canonical is setting the preferred version of the page.  For example:

301 - you have an old version of the page that looks like this  www.example.com/p?=153 and you want it to look like www.example.com/red-apples.  You would use a 301 from the old page (www.example.com/p?=153) to the new page (www.example.com/red-apples)

Canonical - Lets go back to the red apples example.  Lets say you have a ecommerce site and you have different ways to search for products.  One way is to search by fruit and the other by color.  So what you'll have is two versions of the end result.  For example.  You'll have www.example.com/fruit/red-apples and you might have www.example.com/red/red-apples.  Since both of those pages show the same information you don't want the engines to think its duplicate content so you can add a rel=canonical link element to both pages to the preferred version of the two. (ie you might want to have the canonical be www.example.com/red-apples)  That's all it does.  It tells the engines your preferred version of the pages that may be the same.

Back to your original post, you really don't need to "noindex" but I thought you were having a duplicate content issue and that would solve the issue. (Generally, Google won't penalize you this sort of duplicate content)

Here is what I would do.

If you don't have Google Webmaster tools already set up then do so.  Verify each version of your subdomain,  (ie.  india.xyz.com, uk.xyz.com, etc)(let me know if you need help) and then set your Geo Target for each them manually (You'll have to set this up manually because you have a gTLD and not a ccTLD)

How to set your Geo Target manually.

To to a particular version of your site in WMT (ie. india.xyz.com) and click on "configuration" then "settings".  Under "settings" the first sections says "Geographical Target".  "Check" the box and then use the drop down to select "india".

Repeat this for all of your subdomains for each specific country.

This will let Google know that you are trying to target users in a specific country.

If you have the money to invest in it, I would also try to have those subdomains hosted by a server in each particular country. (strong signal for Google)

Hope it helps.

[HiteshBharucha]

Thanx Darin!

I have few doubts on this:

1. is rel canonical like a 301 redirect? As my concern is if my user goes to www.uk.xyz.com/productx , will he be redirected to to www.xyz.com/product

2. my sub domain pages are ranking in the country specific search engine. For ex, www.uk.xyz.com is ranking for keywords in google.co.uk. So if i noindex then i will loose my search engine presence in the country specific search engine.

PS the content on the pages is all same apart from the product currency.

[DarinPirkey]

I disagree.  I said "noindex" not "nofollow".  Link juice will be passed but not show up in the Serps.  I do agree with you though that the strategy as a whole, if there is in-fact exact/duplicate content, seems to be a waste.  Unless these pages are in another language, I don't see the point of this subdomain strategy.

[gmk1567]

Canonical will help to remove duplicate issues and also to consolidate your link values. I didn't see any issue with cross domain implementation.

If you add "noindex" to any of these pages, you won't get any link credit.

[DarinPirkey]

Short Answer:  Set a canonical url on the pages to the root domain version and noindex the subdomain pages.

What this does is avoid the duplicate content problem.  Generally, those subdomain pages won't rank anyway because the same information is on the "main" site.  You can still build links to those subdomain pages and do a strong internal link structure to help the "main" site rankings.

The only negative to this is that the pages in your subdomain won't rank.  That's not necessarily a bad thing but just know they won't.  But, if the pages are truly duplicate content, they won't rank anyway.