Canonical URL Tag Usage

[Paul78]

Hi there,

I have a .co.uk website and a .ie website, which have the exact same content on both, should I put a canonical tag on both websites, on every page?

Kind Regards

[AJPro]

Hello Gary,

You can use the

hreflang="'en-IE" href="www.your-ie.site"> element

For more information see: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

You can also in Google webmaster tools set the country a specific domain is targeting.

[Paul78]

Hi Stefan,

Yes, in Google webmaster tools that countries are set, however one of the keywords I was ranking well for has disappeared from the .co.uk results, when I paste the first paragraph of the .co.uk page in question into .co.uk, its the .ie website that appears, I have also put this on the .co.uk & .ie webpages in question:

rel="alternate" hreflang="en-IE" href="mysite.ie" />

<link < span="">rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="mysite.co.uk" /></link <>

I put the above code about 10 days ago, but still not sorted the problem, I feel that I need to tell Google that the .co.uk website is the original, what do you think?

[Highland]

In this case, no. Matt Cutts has stated that country TLDs that are duplicate are not generally seen as duplicate by Google.

[Paul78]

Hi Highland,

Thanks for your reply.

Do you know what is happening with this then? as it has no PR anymore plus it's not in the index

[Highland]

What are Google Webmaster Tools telling you? Have you used it to tell Google your site is geotargeted?

[Paul78]

Yes, everything is correct in Google webmaster tools. I have a feeling even though this is correct in webmaster tools that Google is counting as duplicate.

[Hannah_Smith]

Hi Gary,

I think on this occasion you ought to use both rel="alternate" and the canonical tag.

One of my colleagues had a conversation with a Googler which supports and explains this further:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/tbTYd3uXgTM

I hope this helps,

Hannah

[Paul78]

Hi Hannah,

Thanks for your feedback.

This is very interesting indeed Hannah, so this means that the .ie version will fall away in SERPs?

Technical question: Do I put the canonical tag on the .ie website pointing to the .co.uk website?

rel="canonical" href="http://www.mywebsite.co.uk"/>

Do I put a canonical tag on the .co.uk website?

Appreciate your help.

[Hannah_Smith]

Like the rel="alternate" tag you need to put the canonical tag on every page of your .ie site pointing to the relevant page on your .co.uk site. You should also put the canonical tag on the .co.uk site pointing to itself - e.g.:

So on http://yourdomain.co.uk/page-whatever you'd need:

http://yourdomain.ie/page-whatever; />

http://yourdomain.ie/page-whatever - you'd need:

http://yourdomain.ie/page-whatever; />

[Paul78]

AH! at the moment I only have one hreflang on each domain

.co.uk website has:

rel="alternate" hreflang="en-IE" href="http://www.mywebsite.ie" />

and .ie website has:

rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="http://www.mywebsite.co.uk" />

Was I doing it wrong to start with?

[Hannah_Smith]

Yep - you need to place the tags on every page which is duplicated across both sites

[Paul78]

Thanks Hannah for all your help, I will let you know how it goes.

Kind Regards

[Paul78]

Hi Hannah,

Just one more question please.

If I had just one website, would you always advice in using a canonical tag for every webpage on that site?

So, http://www.example.com/product-page/ would have canonical tag

rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product-page/" />

[Hannah_Smith]

Hey,

Re the rel-canonical, Bing say they don't like that implementation, but Google are fine with it. My advice? Yep - do it 

Thanks

Hannah

PS If you want to ask a new question it's best to start a new thread - more likely to get seen & answered

[Paul78]

I will do Hannah, thanks again.