Multilingual -> ahref lang, canonical and duplicated title content

[Eurasmus.com]

Hi all!

We have our site eurasmus.com where we are implementing the multilingual.
We have already available english and spanish and we use basically href lang to control different areas.

First question:

When a page is not translated but still is visible in both langauges under /en and /es is it enough with the hreflang or should we 
add a canonical as well? Nowadays we are apply href lang and only canonicals to the one which are duplicated 
in the same language.

Second question:

When some pages are not translated, like http://eurasmus.com/en/info/find-intern-placement-austria and http://eurasmus.com/es/info/find-intern-placement-austria,
we are setting up the href lang but still moz detects title and meta duplicated (not duplicate page content). 
What do you suggest we should do?

Let me know and thank you before hand for your help!

[Stramark]

Did you assign the geography in webmastertools? This is advised and should already prevent some of the problems might they arise ( i think it should be OK)

Using a canonical is always a good way of harnessing the link value to one specific version.

You could test if a problem is there by running your englisch keywords against the local version of Google.

[katemorris]

Geo-tagging is not necessary if the content is just translated.

[katemorris]

HREFLANG is all you need to note the change in language between two pages. However, if the page has not been translated and is available under both language subfolders, make sure there isn't an HREFLANG and has a canonical. When the pages are identical and have 2 URLs, us a canonical and NOT HREFLANG.

I am not sure if Moz detects HREFLANG. If you know it's set up correctly, just ignore the warnings in Moz. And if you can, translate the title and description as well. That'll help get rid of the warnings.

[Eurasmus.com]

Hi there Kate!

Thanks for your time. That is what logic tells me.

But "God" google says, confusing me:

Specifying language and location

We've expanded our support of the rel="alternate" hreflang link element to handle content that is translated or provided for multiple geographic regions. The hreflang attribute can specify the language, optionally the country, and URLs of equivalent content. By specifying these alternate URLs, our goal is to be able to consolidate signals for these pages, and to serve the appropriate URL to users in search. Alternative URLs can be on the same site or on another domain.

Annotating pages as substantially similar content

Optionally, for pages that have substantially the same content in the same language and are targeted at multiple countries, you may use the rel="canonical" link element to specify your preferred version. We’ll use that signal to focus on that version in search, while showing the local URLs to users where appropriate. For example, you could use this if you have the same product page in German, but want to target it separately to users searching on the Google properties for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. 
Update: to simplify implementation, we no longer recommend using rel=canonical.

So I guess canonical is no longer needed?

[katemorris]

They are not great at writing their own explanations for international. What they meant above is if you have geo-targeted correctly, you would not have to use a canonical between two pages that are the same. That they will figure it out on their own.

You aren't geo-targeting, so I still think the canonical would be needed.

[gfiorelli1]

I confirm that the moz crawler does not detect or consider the hreflang (in fact no tabs or advice in the moz analytics is dedicated to it).

The only tools that consider it by default (and that I know) are deepcrawl and onpage.org

[gfiorelli1]

I am not so sure about using canonical, even if this case is multilingual and not multicountry.

Maybe this is due to the well-known inability Google has to communicate correctly, but in this case it is quite clear with its example:

Some example scenarios where rel="alternate" hreflang="x" is recommended:

You keep the main content in a single language and translate only the template, such as the navigation and footer. Pages that feature user-generated content like a forums typically do this.

This scenario is the one described in this Q&A, so I personally would not suggest canonicalization but yes using hreflang, and - obviously - my main priority would be telling to localize all the content of the page, also because without a complete translation  the opportunities to rank in Google.es are substantially zero.

[Eurasmus.com]

This post is deleted!

[gfiorelli1]

What I know is that since almost one year Google is able to deal with duplicated content in a multilingual or multicountry environment if the hreflang is well implemented.

Moreover... if you were using the rel="canonical", you were practically quitting to your Spanish home page (in this specific case) any possibility to even being present in the index, because you would be telling Google:

"Don't consider this URL, but just the canonical one".

This is one of the reasons why Google quit all mention of the rel="canonical" in the hreflang help pages.