Rel Alternate tag and canonical tag implementation question

[Amiee]

Hello, I have a question about the correct way to implement the canoncial and alternate tags for a site supporting multiple languages and markets.

Here's our setup. We have 3 sites, each serving a specific region, and each available in 3 languages.

• www.example.com : serves the US, default language is English
• www.example.ca : serves Canada, default language is English
• www.example.com.mx : serves Mexico, default language is Spanish

In addition, each sites can be viewed in English, French or Spanish, by adding a language specific sub-directory prefix ( /fr , /en, /es).

The implementation of the alternate tag is fairly straightforward.

For the homepage, on www.example.com, it would be:

-MX” href=“http://www.example.com.mx/index.html”  /> -MX” href=”http://www.example.com.mx/fr/index.html“ />
-MX” href=”http://www.example.com.mx/en/index.html“ />
-US” href=”http://www.example.com/fr/index.html” />
-US” href=”http://www.example.com/es/index.html“ />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/fr/index.html” />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/index.html” />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/es/index.html” />

My question is about the implementation of the canonical tag.

Currently, each domain has its own canonical tag, as follows:

rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/index.html"> <link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.ca="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:> 
<link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.com.mx="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:>

I am now wondering is I should set the canonical tag for all my domains to:

<link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.com="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:>

This is what seems to be suggested on this example from the Google help center.

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

What do you think?

[AlanMosley]

i think that page is misleading, this page is clearer

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html

Dont use a canonical, if the have different tlds, only if they are in the same tld.

This video sums it up, you should at least localize your site,

if you have a US a UK and AU site, all in english, this is ok, but you should have currency and date formats to match.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

[Jacek_Kotarba]

I agree with Alan on this.

Canonical is meant to link identical pieces of content.  If the content is in a different language it's not identical and you would want it to appear in the index separately.

[Amiee]

Thank you for your responses. I did get a weird feeling about canonicalizing my .co.uk and .ca sites into my .com site. I leave the canonical tag on each country specific TLD, referencing the canonical URL of the page within each TLD site.