Hreflang and canonical for multi-language website

[Operad-LTD]

Hi all,

We're about to have a new website in different languages and locations, which will replace the existing one.

Lets say the domain name is example.com. the US version will be example.com/en-us/ and the UK version will be example.com/en-uk/. Some of the pages on both version share the same content. So in order to solve it, we're about to use hreflang on each page + a canonical tag which will always use the US address as canonical address.

My question is - since we  are using canonical tag along with hreflang, is there a possibility that a user who is searching with Google.co.uk will get the canonical US address instead of the UK address? Or maybe the search engine  will know to display the right localized address since (UK) i've been using hreflang? It is really important for me to know, because i'm afraid we will lose the high rankings that we have right now on google.co.uk.

Thanks in Advance

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

If the high rankings you have on .co.uk are for competitive keywords then I think you are wise to be concerned. Is the site originally from the US or what is influencing the decision to make the en-us version the default with the new site? Keep in mind also what the default example.com will be supporting, would that also be en-us (thereby rendering /en-us/ irrelevant)?

It used to be that using canonical together with hreflang was ok by google but had some odd side effects: If you canonical the uk version to the us version then certain uk searches could see the uk url but with title/meta/content from the us page. That can be ok depending on what your titles/content are like. If your us page title is 'my company USA' then that is probably not what you want uk searches seeing even if the link lands them on the uk page in the end. It also usually meant that the uk pages CONTENT itself was not searchable in google, so if the page for example had the only mention of a uk phone number then this number would not show up in google serps.

That being said, it seems that google has changed the guidance on using canonicals and hreflang together and is now suggesting only using canonicals within the same language/region set. Check here and the comments here for some more details. Soooo.... not sure if that helps answer your question much more!

[gfiorelli1]

If the hreflang is set up correctly, then the answer is NO.

hreflang and rel="canonical", as stated by Google itself, are two completely different kind of information.

• The first tells Google what URL to show depending on the language and location of users;
• The second tells Google if the URL it is crawling is identical to another one, which is referenced as href in the rel="canonical", therefore to consider it for indexing.

Check this post by David Sottimano, that is quite claryfing (and reports what Google really says now about this kind of situation)

When both annotations are used, we are practically saying this to Google (pardon me for the maybe poor metaphor):

Ok Google, I'm telling you that this URL - A - must be canonicalized to the URL B, so please don't count it as duplicated content. On the other hand, though, for me it is extremely important that you show URL A to the all English speaking users in Great Britain (Google.co.uk). Therefore, just for the situation don't filter out URL A.

Disclaimer: this is true in 99% of the cases, because we know also that the rel="canonical" is not a directive, but a strong hint we are giving to Google.

Because of this it is always a good idea - in the long term - to localize the content, even if American English and British English seems so similar (they aren't). Google has become smart enough to understand the different "flavors" a language may have in different territories.

[gfiorelli1]

Thanks Lynnp for your answer, but unfortunately the suggestions given and documented with those previous Q&As are not valid anymore, because Google has since few months offered a new interpretation to the hreflang/rel="canonical" co-existence issue (read my answer).