"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to SERPs
-
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice.
Scenario
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains.Goal
We want local domains (be, ch, fr, etc.) to appear in SERPs and also comply with Google policy of local language variants and/or canonical links.Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default":<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" />
Issue
After Googlebot crawled the websites we see lot of “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in Coverage/Excluded report (Google Search Console) for most domains. When we inspect some of those URLs we can see Google has decided that canonical URL points to (example):User-declared canonical: None
Google-selected canonical: …same page, but on a different domainStrange is that even those URLs are on Google and can be found in SERPs.
Obviously Google doesn’t know what to make of it. We noticed many websites in the same scenario use a self-referencing approach which is not really “kosher” - we are afraid if we use the same approach we can get penalized by Google.
Question: What do you suggest to fix the “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in our scenario?
Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.
-
The issue of "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" refers to situations where there are multiple identical or very similar pages on a website, but a canonical tag has not been explicitly set to indicate which version should be considered the preferred or original version by search engines.
The impact of this issue on search engine results pages (SERPs) can be negative for several reasons:
Keyword Dilution: When search engines encounter multiple versions of the same or similar content, they might have a hard time determining which page to rank for a particular keyword. This can lead to keyword dilution, where the authority and relevance of the content is spread across multiple pages instead of being concentrated on a single page.
Page Selection Uncertainty: Without a canonical tag to guide search engines, they may choose to index and display a version of the page that is not the most relevant or valuable to users. This can result in users landing on less optimal pages from their search queries.
Ranking Competition: Duplicate content can cause internal competition between your own pages for rankings. Instead of consolidating ranking signals onto one page, they get divided among duplicates, potentially leading to lower overall rankings for all versions.
Crawling and Indexing Issues: Search engine bots may spend more time crawling and indexing duplicate content, which could lead to inefficient use of their resources. This might affect how often your new or updated content gets indexed.
To address the "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" issue and mitigate its impact on SERPs:
Implement Canonical Tags: Set up canonical tags on duplicate or similar pages to indicate the preferred version. This guides search engines to consolidate ranking signals and direct traffic to the correct page.
301 Redirects: If possible, redirect duplicate pages to a single, canonical version using 301 redirects. This not only consolidates ranking signals but also ensures that users are directed to the most relevant content.
Consolidate Content: Consider merging similar pages into a single, comprehensive page. This helps avoid duplication issues and improves the overall user experience.
Use Noindex Tags: If some duplicate pages are not crucial for SEO or user experience, you can add a noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing those pages.
Monitor and Update: Regularly audit your website for duplicate content and ensure that new content is properly canonicalized to prevent future occurrences.
By addressing the "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" issue, you can help improve the clarity and accuracy of how your content appears in SERPs, potentially leading to better rankings and a more effective SEO strategy.
-
@GeorgeJohn727
Duplicate without user-selected canonical -
Understanding 'Duplicate without user-selected canonical' is crucial for optimizing SERPs. This issue can lead to content duplication concerns, potentially affecting search engine rankings. Just as addressing this matter ensures streamlined search results, exploring the 'best online betting sites in India' exemplifies how selecting the right canonical source enhances visibility and credibility in the online domain.
-
- Even if this error occurs it doesn't mean Google ignores the pages - it can and in our case they appear in SERPs.
- Duplicate pages carry value in sense that there is a slight alteration for local market - contact info, different pricing, etc. So 90% of the page is same on national
domains, but only slight part differs.
-
@alex_pisa
The error "Duplicate without user-selected canonical” indicates that Google found duplicate URLs that are not canonicalized to a preferred version. Google didn't index these duplicate URLs and assigned a canonical version on its own.How to fix this issue
Should these pages even exist? If the answer to this is no, simply remove these pages and return a HTTP status code 410.
If these pages have a purpose, then ask yourself whether they
carry any value:-
If yes, then canonicalize them to the preferred version of the URL. Need some inspiration where to canonicalize to? See which URL Google finds most relevant using the URL Inspection tool(opens in a new tab). If Google's listing PDF files for your site, canonicalize them through the HTTP header.
-
If these pages don't carry any value, then make sure to apply the noindex directive through the meta robots tag or X-Robots-Tag HTTP Header.
-
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
-
Unsolved I have a "click rate juice" question would like to know.
Hello I have a "click rate juice" question would like to know. For example. I created a noindex site for a few days event purposes. Using a random domain like this: event.example.com. Expecting 5000+ clicks per day. Is it possible to gain some traffic juice from this event website domain "example.com" to my other main site "main.com" but without exposing its URL. Thought about using 301 redirecting "example.com" to "main.com". But it will reveal the example-b.com to the general public if someone visits the domain "example.com". Also thought about using a canonical URL, but it would not be working because the event site is noindex. or it would not matter at all 🤔 Wondering if there is a thing like this to gain some traffic juice for another domain? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blueli0 -
Site is generating long path URLs
Hi, We've seen recently in Search Console Coverage report that website is generating long path URLs that we actually don't have.
Technical SEO | | eUniverse
Here's an example: https://autocovers.co.uk/car-mats/outdoor-basic/indoor-car-covers/shop/contact-us/shipping-delivery/about-us/about-us/indoor-car-covers/ Does anybody knows what's the issue behind it? Thanks!0 -
Duplicate store (subdomain) not ranking
I have a store ( www.grocare.com ) and I made a duplicate store recently ( in.grocare.com ) for a different region. Both have different currencies and target different regions. I even targeted the new store ( in.grocare.com ) to that particular country in google search console. They both have different href lang tags to mark different regions too. Now its been a month since this has been done. But the new store is not ranking in the region. The old one is still ranking and I have to redirect the traffic from old to new based on IP.
International SEO | | grocare
I thought making a new store and targeting specifically would help with rankings. Am i doing something wrong here?0 -
Duplicate Content Regarding Translated Pages
If we have one page in English, and another that is translated into Spanish, does google consider that duplicate content? I don't know if having something in a different language makes it different or if it will get flagged. Thanks, Ruben
International SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Can I use rel="alternate" language tags on multiple domains?
On a page with the domain "www.example-1.com.br" (for pt-BR) I will include the following tags: That will work?
International SEO | | Ewerton.RD0 -
International Sites and Duplicate Content
Hello, I am working on a project where have some doubts regarding the structure of international sites and multi languages.Website is in the fashion industry. I think is a common problem for this industry. Website is translated in 5 languages and sell in 21 countries. As you can imagine this create a huge number of urls, so much that with ScreamingFrog I cant even complete the crawling. Perhaps the UK site is visible in all those versions http://www.MyDomain.com/en/GB/ http://www.MyDomain.com/it/GB/ http://www.MyDomain.com/fr/GB/ http://www.MyDomain.com/de/GB/ http://www.MyDomain.com/es/GB/ Obviously for SEO only the first version is important One other example, the French site is available in 5 languages and again... http://www.MyDomain.com/fr/FR/ http://www.MyDomain.com/en/FR/ http://www.MyDomain.com/it/FR/ http://www.MyDomain.com/de/FR/ http://www.MyDomain.com/es/FR/ And so on...this is creating 3 issues mainly: Endless crawling - with crawlers not focusing on most important pages Duplication of content Wrong GEO urls ranking in Google I have already implemented href lang but didn't noticed any improvements. Therefore my question is Should I exclude with "robots.txt" and "no index" the non appropriate targeting? Perhaps for UK leave crawable just English version i.e. http://www.MyDomain.com/en/GB/, for France just the French version http://www.MyDomain.com/fr/FR/ and so on What I would like to get doing this is to have the crawlers more focused on the important SEO pages, avoid content duplication and wrong urls rankings on local Google Please comment
International SEO | | guidoampollini0 -
E-Commerce site in 2 languages - Duplicate content or not?
How does Google view this? Our current site works like:
International SEO | | bjs2010
www.domain.com/EN - English
www.domain.com/ES - Spanish All products are the same, just different language and different URL for them - is this good or bad? I thought of either Going with .co.uk or .com for "English" and a .es for "Spanish"
OR Subdomaining it. www.es.domain.com and www.en.domain.com Any advice appreciated!0 -
Keyword selection for international company
Hi everyone, I am working on a new project for a telecommunications company with its target audience in various countries around Europe and USA. They only have 1 website in English and don’t have content specific to different countries. Ineed to choose keywords for this project but I am finding it quite challenging as usually my keywords are localised. In this case I cannot restrict keywords to any particular country. At the same time I know that it would be extremely tough to rank for generic keywords. What do you suggest?
International SEO | | ICON_Malta0