Duplicate Page Content due to Language and Currency
-
Hi Folks, hoping someone can help me out please
I have a site that I'd like to rank in France and the UK but I'm getting a stack of duplicate content errors due to English and French pages and GBP and EUR prices.
Below is an example of how the home page is duplicated:
http://www.site.com/?sl=en?sl=fr
http://www.site.com/?sl=fr?sl=fr
http://www.site.com
http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP?sl=fr
http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP?sl=en
http://www.site.com/?sl=fr?sl=en
http://www.site.com/?currency=EUR?sl=fr
http://www.site.com/?currency=EUR?sl=en
http://www.site.com/?currency=EUR
http://www.site.com/?sl=en¤cy=EUR
http://www.site.com/?sl=en¤cy=GBP
http://www.site.com/?sl=en
http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP
http://www.site.com/?sl=en?sl=enEach page has the following code in the that updates according to the page you are on:
How do I simplify this and what's the correct approach?
-
Thank you so much Gianlucca! Lots to take away and get fixed.
-
I'm sorry to answer you with a question:
Why are you letting indexing the URLs with currencies?
I mean, the GB URL with Pounds is what you want to have indexed if you're geo-tarketing Great Britain, and not the GB page with the Euro currency.
The same in the case of the French version targeting France.
Said that, I kindly ask you to explain better what mean each URL you pasted in your question, so to able to answer and help you better.
http://www.site.com/?sl=en?sl=fr << What does represent this URL? SL is the language? If so, how can possibly exist a URL with two different language parameters?
http://www.site.com/?sl=fr?sl=fr << If SL is the language parameter, why in this URL it is repeated twice?
http://www.site.com << I suppose this is the canonical URL for your main language, or, instead, is it just the root and then the site applies a 302 redirection accordingly to geo-targeting?
http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP?sl=fr << Do you think is it necessary to let index a page targeting the French marketing but showing prices in Pounds? I do not think so, because the percentage of French users looking for price in another currency than Euro must be something like the 0.000001% of the entire population.
http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP?sl=en << If http://www.site.com/ is in English, targets GB and by default has Pounds as currency, than this URL should be canonicalized toward it.
http://www.site.com/?sl=fr?sl=en << What does represent this URL? SL is the language? If so, how can possibly exist a URL with two different language parameters?
http://www.site.com/?currency=EUR?sl=fr << I see that your site does not have a subfolder structure like /fr/ (and that would be the better way to go), so I imagine that this is the canonical URL for the France targeting home page, which correctly would present Euro as default currency. If it is so, this is the URL your should use in the hreflang annotation for the homepage.
http://www.site.com/?currency=EUR?sl=en << Again, if your English version is meant for geotargeting the GB market, this kind of URL (GB target but Euro as currency) should be not indexed IMHO.
http://www.site.com/?currency=EUR << I suspect this represent the homepage in the main language, but with the currency set up on Euro, correct? If so, it would be the same of the URL here below. In both cases, I would not let these kind of URL to be indexed
http://www.site.com/?sl=en¤cy=EUR << See what I wrote above
http://www.site.com/?sl=en¤cy=GBP << If everything I wrote is correct, this is a duplicate of http://www.site.com/. If it is so, these kinds of URLs should be canonicalized toward the first ones (and this is true also for URLs like the one here below and http://www.site.com/sl=en¤cy=GBP and http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP et al)
http://www.site.com/?sl=en<< See what I wrote above
http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP<< See what I wrote above
http://www.site.com/?sl=en?sl=en << If SL is the language parameter, why in this URL it is repeated twice?Sincerely, from the URLs you gave as example, your site is not ranking not because of the hreflang, but because of the systematic production of duplicated pages, and that is something due to what seems a poor Information Architecture development.
Before even thinking about fixing the hreflang, fix the site.
-
It is generally not a problem if the content is for different users in different countries.
Unfortunately, there is no way to simplify this process. Ideally, it would be improved if you created unique content for the different language and/or groups. Google recommends creating unique content for different regions...What you have done however is correct technically.
Intrigued to see other answers posted...
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
-
Near-Duplicate Content
Hi, On my website, we are showcasing many products in both English and Spanish. We originally create each a product description in English, then we translate to Spanish. But sometimes, due to having numerous products, we don't translate to Spanish, and we just pull the English description on the Spanish page (so it has menus etc in Spanish, but the long Product Description in in English). English Example: http://www.viatrading.com/product.jhtm?id=34608
International SEO | | viatrading1
Spanish Example: http://www.viatrading.com/wholesale/product/TIGR-LN-APP/Ropa,-Relojes,-Gafas-y-Accesorios.html?cid=4 Could that be considered duplicated (or near-duplicated) content? For SEO, would it be better if the Spanish product page was redirected to the English one if not translated? Thank you,0 -
How to handle different content on same domain internationally?
Dear community, I have encountered a unique situation and I am unsure as how to proceed, I have a U.S. based website for intentions of this question is www.musicstore.com. The customer has decided to offer their products up for sale internationally, however, has two business requirements, one is that his international presence differs with product offering and content then the domestic version and two, that they both live on the same domain of www.musicstore.com without any reference to offering a differing international presence. Many of his products are offered for purchase directly overseas, while not against his suppliers rules, it is frowned upon. All this said, now to my question. I'm currently running a Magento two website install. With GeoIP setting which version of www.musicstore.com is presented. Do I have to worry about different content being displayed on the same exact url even though the experience is completely location based? If it is a concern, any risks I should be concerned with. I could possibly do something along the lines of www.musicstore.com/in/ while this is not ideal for the customer, if it prevents many larger issues I'd steer the customer this way. I just want my customer to be able to sell his product internationally without upsetting his suppliers or making Google go, what does this site actually have. Hopefully I explained my question well enough for those who can help to understand. Please ask if you need any more information. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
International SEO | | swarming0 -
Duplicate content - news archive
Most of them are due to news items having more than 1 category – which is pretty normal.Also /us/blog, /uk/blog and /ca/blog are effectively the same page.None of them are actually duplicate content – just alternate URLs for the same pagehttp://www.fdmgroup.com/category/news/
International SEO | | fdmgroup0 -
Same language manage many country
Hello, I would like to hear how you would handle the following situation. I make website for people with a .be domain that also want to score in .nl . Both countries speak dutch. There are however slight variations between the two countries. For some it does not matter for others it can be handy. Ex. A specific product might be called diffrent in one country then the other. The main problem is for those that have a .be domain will not score on a .nl domain and visa versa. This due geo targeting. What would you do? Imagine we already have a .be domain (.be == belgium, .nl==Netherland both speak dutch) A: Buy a .nl and copy and show the same content on .nl as .be
International SEO | | nono_1974
B: Buy a .nl and make new content (lots of work)
😄 Buy a .EU, .com adres and Geotarget nl.somedomain.eu , be.somedomain.eu . But what about the content The main problem is double content and targeting the two countries.0 -
Multilingual Ecommerce Product Pages Best Practices
Hi Mozzers, We have a marketplace with 20k+ products, most of which are written in English. At the same time we support several different languages. This changes the chrome of the site (nav, footer, help text, buttons, everything we control) but leaves all the products in their original language. This resulted in all kinds of duplicate content (pages, titles, descriptions) being detected by SEOMoz and GWT. After doing some research we implemented the on page rel="alternate" hreflang="x", seeing as our situation almost perfectly matched the first use case listed by Google on this page http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077. This ended up not helping at all. Google still reports duplicate titles and descriptions for thousands of products, months after setting this up. We are thinking about changing to the sitemap implementation rel="alternate" hreflang="X", but are not sure if this will work either. Other options we have considered include noindex or blocks with robots.txt when the product language is not the same as the site language. That way the feature is still open to users while removing the duplicate pages for Google. So I'm asking for input on best practice for getting Google to correctly recognize one product, with 6 different language views of that same product. Can anyone help? Examples: (Site in English, Product in English) http://website.com/products/product-72 (Site in Spanish, Product in English) http://website.com/es/products/product-72 (Site in German, Product in English) http://website.com/de/products/product-72 etc...
International SEO | | sedwards0 -
Multi Language / target market site
What is the best way to deal with multiple languages and multiple target markets? Is it better to use directories or sub-domains: English.domain.com Portuguese.domain.com Or Domain.com Domain.com/Portuguese Also should I use language meta tags to help the different language versions rank in different geographic areas e.g. Are there any examples of where this has been done well?
International SEO | | RodneyRiley0 -
Is duplicate content a concern across multiple CCTLDs?
Looking for experienced feedback on a new client challenge. Multiple pages of content in the English language are replicated across multiple CCTLDs in addition to the .com address we're working with. Is duplicate content a concern in this case? What measures are recommended to help preserve their North American search inclusion while not serving as a detriment to external (European/Asian CCTLDs) properties aimed for other geos/languages? EDIT: After posting, this was read. Any thoughts? http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-tools-provides-details-on-duplicate-content-across-domains-99246
International SEO | | eMagineSEO0 -
Is duplicate content really an issue on different International Google engines?
i.e. Google.com v.s. Google.co.uk This relates to another question I have open on a similar issue. So if I open the same e-commerce site (virtually) on company.com and company.co.uk, does Google really view that as duplicate content? I would be inclined to think they have that figured out but I havent had much experience with international SEO...
International SEO | | BlinkWeb0