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
-
Google tries to index non existing language URLs. Why?
Hi, I am working for a SAAS client. He uses two different language versions by using two different subdomains.
Technical SEO | | TheHecksler
de.domain.com/company for german and en.domain.com for english. Many thousands URLs has been indexed correctly. But Google Search Console tries to index URLs which were never existing before and are still not existing. de.domain.com**/en/company
en.domain.com/de/**company ... and an thousand more using the /en/ or /de/ in between. We never use this variant and calling these URLs will throw up a 404 Page correctly (but with wrong respond code - we`re fixing that 😉 ). But Google tries to index these kind of URLs again and again. And, I couldnt find any source of these URLs. No Website is using this as an out going link, etc.
We do see in our logfiles, that a Screaming Frog Installation and moz.com w opensiteexplorer were trying to access this earlier. My Question: How does Google comes up with that? From where did they get these URLs, that (to our knowledge) never existed? Any ideas? Thanks 🙂0 -
How to Remove Web Cache snapshot page & other language SEO Title in Google Search Engine?
Hi... Please tell me how to remove web cache link given below. I have changed my SEO title but it can't be changed...Any other methods for without using webmaster tools. Kw3arat
Technical SEO | | Thilak_geo040 -
Doctype language declaration problem
Hello,
Technical SEO | | Silviu
I have a problem with an SEM Rush warning on a website audit, for www.enjoyprepaid.com. It tells me "5852 pages are lacking language declaration", but I don't understand what it means and how to actually fix this problem. Also I run a W3 validator and have a doctype and language problem but again don't understand what they mean and how to fix them https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.enjoyprepaid.com%2FAfghanistan-calling-cards-2.html0 -
Is this okay with google if i can access my sub categories from two different path?
My website is url is abcd.com. One of my category url is abcd.com/mobile.aspx. Which contains 5 sub categories :- samung Mobile 2) Nokia Mobile 3) Sony Mobile 4) HTC Mobile 5) Blackberry Mobile Now if i go in to HTC Mobile sub categories i.e. abcd.com/htcmobile.aspx here i will see all the product related to HTC Mobile. But at below of all product i will find all sub categories that is samsung mobile, nokia mobile, sony mobile and blackberry mobile. So i want to task is this okay? Google will not count these categories as duplicate that is i can access all 4 categories i.e. samsung, nokia, sony and blackberry from here 1) abcd.com/mobile.aspx and 2) abcd.com/htcmobile.aspx Thanks! Dev
Technical SEO | | devdan0 -
Multi Language websites!
Hello, What is the best way for a website to have more languages? For example www.site.com is in english BUT the content will be translated in other 4 languages .es .it .fr .de . Should i buy 4 diferent domains www.site1.es www.site2.it etc... or create folders like site.com/es/ site.com/it etc OR create subdomains es.site.com Few months ago i was 100% sure..to go and buy diferent domains then to create diferent content on that languages..but now..i am not so sure. Thank you very much for your help!
Technical SEO | | willyg0 -
Different links to to the same page
Hi, Based on the user's actions we post activity into users Facebook timeline. And each activity has link back to our particular page on our website. For example if original page was: www.Domain.com from Facebook timeline it would be like this: www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 Do you think this will have a negative effect on our page rankings as we will eded up having a lot of different URL's to the same page? www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=456788765609 etc.. Thank you, Karen Bdoyan
Technical SEO | | showme0 -
Different Domain Structure & hyperlinks pointing to them_Need Clarification
Hi, I have a question regarding the Domain Structure and hyperlinks should point to. I know that all of the below domain/URL structure are different. The first thing I have read is that we should do 301 redirect from non www domain.com domain.com/ to www domain/site URL. www.domain.com www.domain.com/ What about the trailing slash, does the Google considers the building links to www.domain.com/ is same as with out trailing slash, www.domain.com Or we have to any 301 redirect for these domain URL format as well. Please clarify my doubt. The same doubt is there for these two URL Structure as well. http://www.domain.com (Root domain with out trailing slash) http://www.domain.com/ (Domain with trailing slash) And if I am concentrating on my Homepage what is the best URL structure to follow whether the root domain or the domain with trailing slash. Can someone please clarify above doubts Thanks Vicky
Technical SEO | | vickygoal0 -
Best way to handle different views of the same page?
Say I have a page: mydomain.com/page But I also have different views: /?sort=alpha /print-version /?session_ID=2892 etc. All same content, more or less. Should the subsequent pages have ROBOTS meta tag with noindex? Should I use canonical? Both? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ChatterBlock0