Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. International SEO
    4. Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues

    International SEO
    3
    9
    5598
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Avid_Demand
      Avid_Demand Subscriber last edited by

      Hi,

      Let's say I have a site located at https://www.example.com, and also have subdirectories setup for different languages. For example:

      https://www.example.com/es_ES/

      https://www.example.com/fr_FR/

      https://www.example.com/it_IT/

      My Spanish version currently has the following hreflang tags and canonical tag implemented:

      My robots.txt file is blocking all of my language subdirectories. For example:

      User-agent:*

      Disallow: /es_ES/

      Disallow: /fr_FR/

      Disallow: /it_IT/

      This setup doesn't seem right. I don't think I should be blocking the language-specific subdirectories via robots.txt

      What are your thoughts?

      Does my hreflang tag and canonical tag implementation look correct to you? Should I be doing this differently?

      I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or suggestions.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • gfiorelli1
        gfiorelli1 last edited by

        Hi... I'm sorry to tell you that the answer offered by Gaston is not totally correct.

        So, in your Spanish page you have these hreflang and canonical annotations:

        This is not correct because you are not adding also the self-referential hreflang annotation

        Google is very precise about this, and it states its need in the help pages as well in many Googlers tweets and webmaster office hangouts.

        The rel="canonical" is correct. Remember that the self-referential and the alternative href URLs must always be canonicals.

        Finally, regarding the subfolders blocked via robots.txt, yes! that's totally incorrect:

        if you're blocking Googlebot from accessing the Spanish, French and Italian subfolders, then Googlebot won't be able to parse the code of their pages, hence it won't be able to see also the hreflang annotations... with obvious erroneous consequences.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 5
        • GastonRiera
          Gaston Riera @Avid_Demand last edited by

          that's corect.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Avid_Demand
            Avid_Demand Subscriber @GastonRiera last edited by

            Yes. example.com/en-US/ redirects 301 to example.com

            So, when referencing that version in hreflang will it look like this?

            Is this correct?

            GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • GastonRiera
              Gaston Riera @Avid_Demand last edited by

              So, every page of example.com/en-US/ redirects 301 to example.com/ ?

              If that's the case, then there is no reason in having that folder (/en-US/), just when configuring Hreflang for en-US use the URL without that folder

              Avid_Demand 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Avid_Demand
                Avid_Demand Subscriber @GastonRiera last edited by

                What do you mean by "exactly the same then there should not be 2 sites"?

                My https://www.example.com/en-US/ 301 redirects to https://www.example.com

                Thoughts?

                GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • GastonRiera
                  Gaston Riera @Avid_Demand last edited by

                  Yeap, those implementations are correct.

                  in order to avoid duplicate content between different language/countries websites, in each page that is present on each site, there should be their corresponding hreflang tag.

                  In your case:
                  And for a sample page: https://www.smarttechMKT.com/es-ES/gastonriera-espanol

                  NOTE, in the case that site.com and site.com/en-us/ are exactly the same then there should not be 2 sites. Just the one without the folder and hreflang tag with en-US should point to that
                  Hope it helps.
                  Best luck.
                  GR

                  Avid_Demand 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Avid_Demand
                    Avid_Demand Subscriber @GastonRiera last edited by

                    Thank you for the response, Gaston! I really appreciate it.

                    So you are certain that my hreflang and canonical tags are implemented correctly? For example, my Spanish version (https://www.example.com/es_ES/😞

                    Is this implementation correct?

                    Also, will I have any duplicate content issues with these different language versions?

                    GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • GastonRiera
                      Gaston Riera last edited by

                      Hello there,

                      Watch out your question, there is a site there. If its your clients, edit it.

                      Canonical and hreflang seems OK. 
                      Blocking other languages/countries is wrong. There you are allowing google to see ONLY the us version.

                      For further reading, take a look at these articles:
                      Hreflang:
                      Multi-regional and multilingual sites - Google Search Console
                      International checklist - Moz Blog
                      Using the correct hreglang tag - Moz Blog
                      Guide to international website expansion - Moz Blog
                      Tool for checking hreflang anotations - Moz Blog Canonicals:
                      SEO Best Practices for Canonical URLs + the Rel=Canonical Tag - Whiteboard Friday Consolidate duplicate URLs - Google Search Console Help

                      Hope it helps.
                      Best Luck.
                      GR.

                      Hope it helps.
                      Best luck.
                      GR.

                      Avid_Demand 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      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.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • moon-boots

                        Traffic drop after hreflang tags added

                        We operate one company with two websites each serving a different location, one targeting EU customers and the other targeting US customers. thespacecollective.com (EU customers) thespacecollective.com/us/ (US customers) We have always had canonical tags in place, but we added the following hreflang tags two weeks ago (apparently this is best practice); EU site (thespacecollective.com) US site (thespacecollective.com/us/) Literally the same day we added the above hreflang tags our traffic dropped off a cliff (we have lost around 70-80% on the EU site, and after a minor recovery, 50% on the US site). Now, my first instinct is to remove the tags entirely and go back to just using canonical, but if this is truly best practice, that could do more damage than good. This is the only change that has been made in recent weeks regarding SEO. Is there something obvious that I am missing because it looks correct to me?

                        International SEO | | moon-boots
                        0
                      • muzzmoz

                        How to avoid duplication across multiple country domains

                        Here's the scenario: I have a client currently running one Shopify site (AU) They want to launch three more country domains (US, UK and EU) They want each to be a standalone site, primarily so the customers can purchase in their local currency, which is not possible from a single Shopify site The inventory is all from the same source The product desscriptions will all be the same as well Question: How do we avoid content duplication (ie. how will canonical tags work in this scenario)?

                        International SEO | | muzzmoz
                        0
                      • ABullis

                        Hreflang Alternate & Pagination

                        Hi everybody, So I'm setting up hreflang tags on an ecommerce site. The sites are in the USA and Canada. The Canadian site will have fewer products than the American site, meaning that there won't be as many pages in each category as there are on the American site. What is the correct way to handle hreflang tags on these extra category pages? To put this another way, the American site may have a category with 3 pages of products, while the Canadian equivalent only has 2 pages of products. What happens to this extra American category page (example.com/widget-category/page-3) ? Does it get an hreflang tag linking to the first page of the equivalent Canadian category (example.ca/widget-category/)? Does it not get any hreflang tags because it has no true Canadian counterpart? Does it matter at all if it has a canonical tag pointing to the first page in the series anyway (example**.com**/widget-category/)? Thanks, Andrew B.

                        International SEO | | ABullis
                        0
                      • edward-may

                        HELP: Incorrect Meta Tag description showing for the wrong search results

                        Hi Guys I'm stuck here! I have update the hreftags, updated the sitemaps. I have 3 top level domains and my zenory.com site is showing for the home page the wrong meta tag description, as you can see in the attachement the meta tag is showing the new zealand site meta tag description which is for zenory.co.nz Anyone know what might be going on here? I have also fetched the home page through WMT as well and its still returning the same results any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks

                        International SEO | | edward-may
                        0
                      • mat-relevance

                        Is there any reason to get a massive decrease on indexed pages?

                        Hi, I'm helping on SEO for a big e-commerce in LatAm and one thing we've experienced during the last months is that our search traffic had reduced and the indexed pages had decreased in a terrible way. The site had over 2 Million indexed pages (which was way too much, since we believe that around 10k would be more than enough to hold the over 6K SKUs) but now this number has decreased to less than 3K in less than 2 months. I've also noticed that most of the results in which the site is still appearing are .pdf or .doc files but not actual content on the website. I've checked the following: Robots (there is no block, you can see that on the image as well) Webmaster Tools Penalties Duplicated content I don't know where else to look for. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance! cpLwX1X

                        International SEO | | mat-relevance
                        0
                      • seoec

                        Showing different content according to different geo-locations on same URL

                        We would like our website to show different content according to different Geo-locations (but in the same language).  For example, if www.mywebsite.com is accessed from the US, it would show text (in English) appealing to North Americans, but, if accessed from Japan, it would show text (also in English) that appeals more to Japanese people. In the Middle East, we would like the website to show different images than those shown in the US and Asia. Our main concern is that we would like to keep the same URL. How will Google index these pages? Will it index the www.mywebsite.com (Japan version) in its Asia archives and the www.mywebsite.com (US version) in its North American archives? Will Google penalise us for showing different content across Geo-locations on the same URL? What if a URL is meant to show content only in Japan? Are there any other issues that we should be looking out for? Kindest Regards L.B.

                        International SEO | | seoec
                        0
                      • ALLee

                        International hreflang - will this handle duplicate content?

                        The title says it all - if i have duplicate content on my US and UK website, will adding the hreflang tag help google figure out that they are duplicate for a reason and avoid any penalties?

                        International SEO | | ALLee
                        1
                      • dennis.globalsign

                        Which hreflang tag to use for .eu domain

                        Hi there, We're trying to solve a problem with one of our domains, we have a .eu CCTLD and we're trying to implement hreflang tags. On our US and UK sites, we use "en-us" and "en-gb", but it's not clear how to approach this european problem, as there is not a "en-eu" tag. The site is in English, but serves several European countries speaking different languages. What's the best hreflang code to use in this situation? Any help much appreciated, Thanks!

                        International SEO | | dennis.globalsign
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.