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.
Same content, different languages. Duplicate content issue? | international SEO
-
Hi,
If the "content" is the same, but is written in different languages, will Google see the articles as duplicate content?
If google won't see it as duplicate content. What is the profit of implementing the alternate lang tag?Kind regards,Jeroen -
If the content is the same, but translated, without the hreflang tag, it is duplicate content. The hreflang tag is there to serve as a signal that you know the content is the same but translated and you want Google to know that as well. This situation is exactly what hreflang is made for.
-
Hi Logan,
Content is published on different TLD's ( .com, .eu, .nl and .be)
Kind regards,
Jeroen
-
Hi Whebb,
The content is published on different domains. @ .com , .eu, .nl and .be ( last 2 are both duch).
Kind regards,
Jeroen
-
Jeroen,
In addition to helping mitigate duplicate content, the hreflang tag you're referring to helps keep content in its respective version of Google. For example, you don't want English content showing up in Google.es (Spain), or German content showing in Google.co.uk.
How is the content broken out on the site, in different subfolders, subdomains, or TLD?
-
Hello,
Is the content on the same domain or different domains? I ask because I recently came across a similar question in another Moz Q&A that may be of some use to you.
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
-
SEO for multiple languages [Arabic]
Hello all, I am currently managing a Marketplace that comes in two different languages: English & Arabic. The English website is, fortunately, doing quite well in terms of SEO performances but, not the Arabic one. The website has two kinds of content: Static content: controlled by me. It includes menu items, navigation, static pages etc which is properly translated among the two languages User-uploaded content: It includes ads/news posted by the user which may not be translated to Arabic if they chose not to do it. Now if somebody goes to the Arabic website and check a news item that doesn't have an Arabic translation, it will show the English title. I am assuming, serving content in a different language that is specified in the hreflang is a straight no, right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozammilStorat0 -
Duplicate Content through 'Gclid'
Hello, We've had the known problem of duplicate content through the gclid parameter caused by Google Adwords. As per Google's recommendation - we added the canonical tag to every page on our site so when the bot came to each page they would go 'Ah-ha, this is the original page'. We also added the paramter to the URL parameters in Google Wemaster Tools. However, now it seems as though a canonical is automatically been given to these newly created gclid pages; below https://www.google.com.au/search?espv=2&q=site%3Awww.mypetwarehouse.com.au+inurl%3Agclid&oq=site%3A&gs_l=serp.3.0.35i39l2j0i67l4j0i10j0i67j0j0i131.58677.61871.0.63823.11.8.3.0.0.0.208.930.0j3j2.5.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..8.3.419.nUJod6dYZmI Therefore these new pages are now being indexed, causing duplicate content. Does anyone have any idea about what to do in this situation? Thanks, Stephen.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyPetWarehouse0 -
Removing duplicate content
Due to URL changes and parameters on our ecommerce sites, we have a massive amount of duplicate pages indexed by google, sometimes up to 5 duplicate pages with different URLs. 1. We've instituted canonical tags site wide. 2. We are using the parameters function in Webmaster Tools. 3. We are using 301 redirects on all of the obsolete URLs 4. I have had many of the pages fetched so that Google can see and index the 301s and canonicals. 5. I created HTML sitemaps with the duplicate URLs, and had Google fetch and index the sitemap so that the dupes would get crawled and deindexed. None of these seems to be terribly effective. Google is indexing pages with parameters in spite of the parameter (clicksource) being called out in GWT. Pages with obsolete URLs are indexed in spite of them having 301 redirects. Google also appears to be ignoring many of our canonical tags as well, despite the pages being identical. Any ideas on how to clean up the mess?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Two Different Domains exact same content
Hello, I suspect I know the answer to this but would like to have it confirmed. I have been speaking to a company the last couple of weeks who have 2 domains with the exact same content. Possible a third but they haven't supplied a link. This from all I've read would be a huge problem for ranking and SEO. What would be the best way to deal with this ? I did do a search and found articles/questions on same content on the same site and in articles etc but nothing about exactly the same websites on 2 domains. Cheers David.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | techdesign0 -
Google crawling different content--ever ok?
Here are a couple of scenarios I'm encountering where Google will crawl different content than my users on initial visit to the site--and which I think should be ok. Of course, it is normally NOT ok, I'm here to find out if Google is flexible enough to allow these situations: 1. My mobile friendly site has users select a city, and then it displays the location options div which includes an explanation for why they may want to have the program use their gps location. The user must choose the gps, the entire city, or he can enter a zip code, or choose a suburb of the city, which then goes to the link chosen. OTOH it is programmed so that if it is a Google bot it doesn't get just a meaningless 'choose further' page, but rather the crawler sees the page of results for the entire city (as you would expect from the url), So basically the program defaults for the entire city results for google bot, but for for the user it first gives him the initial ability to choose gps. 2. A user comes to mysite.com/gps-loc/city/results The site, seeing the literal words 'gps-loc' in the url goes out and fetches the gps for his location and returns results dependent on his location. If Googlebot comes to that url then there is no way the program will return the same results because the program wouldn't be able to get the same long latitude as that user. So, what do you think? Are these scenarios a concern for getting penalized by Google? Thanks, Ted
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Artist Bios on Multiple Pages: Duplicate Content or not?
I am currently working on an eComm site for a company that sells art prints. On each print's page, there is a bio about the artist followed by a couple of paragraphs about the print. My concern is that some artists have hundreds of prints on this site, and the bio is reprinted on every page,which makes sense from a usability standpoint, but I am concerned that it will trigger a duplicate content penalty from Google. Some people are trying to convince me that Google won't penalize for this content, since the intent is not to game the SERPs. However, I'm not confident that this isn't being penalized already, or that it won't be in the near future. Because it is just a section of text that is duplicated, but the rest of the text on each page is original, I can't use the rel=canonical tag. I've thought about putting each artist bio into a graphic, but that is a huge undertaking, and not the most elegant solution. Could I put the bio on a separate page with only the artist's info and then place that data on each print page using an <iframe>and then put a noindex,nofollow in the robots.txt file?</p> <p>Is there a better solution? Is this effort even necessary?</p> <p>Thoughts?</p></iframe>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbaylor0 -
How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio0 -
Serving different content based on IP location
I have city centric website. For sake of simplicity, say I only have 2 cities -- City A and City B. Depending on a user's IP address, they will either get City A or City B. Users can change their location through javascript on pages. But there is no cross-linking between cities. By this, I mean that unless you can read or execute javascript, there is no way for you to get from city A to City B. My concern is this: googlebot comes to my site, and we serve them up City A. How does City B get discovered if Googlebot doesn't read javascript? We have an xml sitemap plus plenty of backlinks to City B. Is this sufficient? Should I provide a static link to City B (and vice versa) on the homepage for crawling purposes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChatterBlock0