Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. .com and .co.uk duplicate content

    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.

    .com and .co.uk duplicate content

    Technical SEO
    3
    9
    1418
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • KarlBantleman
      KarlBantleman last edited by

      hi mozzers

      I have a client that has just released a .com version of their .co.uk website. They have basically re-skinned the .co.uk version with some US amends so all the content and title tags are the same. What you do recommend? Canonical tag to the .co.uk version? rewrite titles?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • KarlBantleman
        KarlBantleman @gazzerman1 last edited by

        Just a quick question, the client in question, in their wisdom, decided to put the US website live without telling me and our UK rankings have dropped significantly, do you think the tag will start to fix this?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • gazzerman1
          gazzerman1 last edited by

          It is unlikely because Google normally gives preference to the original for a fairly long period of time. However with Google there are no certainties but they do get this right in almost all cases I have seen.

          The only users you should see decline on your site are non UK visitors as you are telling them with default-x that they should be sent to the .com

          There are many huge companies adopting this process and also thousands of other smaller sites, I think Google has ironed out most of the issues over the last 2 years. You are more likely to see a slower uptake on the new domain than the original than the other way around.

          Hope that helps

          KarlBantleman 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • KarlBantleman
            KarlBantleman @gazzerman1 last edited by

            Hi Gary,

            thanks for the help, as a UK website, we primarily want to rank in the UK but we obviously want to rank in the US. By making the .com website (which is brand new) is this likely to affect our UK rankings or should they be unaffected?

            Thanks again,

            Karl

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • gazzerman1
              gazzerman1 last edited by

              The actual page you want to look at is https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077

              hreflang is the tag you should implement.

              I have had long chats with John Mueller at Google about this.

              Your setup should be something like this on all pages on both sites.

              Within about 7 days depending on the size of your website the .com should appear in favor of the .co.uk for your US based results. For me it happened within an hour!

              Setting your .com as a default will be better than setting your co.uk.  The co.uk is already a region specific TLD and will not rank well generally in other search engines even if set in the hreflang to do differently.

              This will let Google decide where to send traffic too based on their algo/data.

              If you use a canonical tag you will be suggesting/pushing US users to the original content instead of the US site.

              KarlBantleman 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • KarlBantleman
                KarlBantleman @GPainter last edited by

                Ok, thanks for the help. I'll have a look into it and see what it says. The .com website is up now and they are hell bent on it staying! I did recommend having a /US but they preferred the .com!

                Anyway thanks for the advice!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • GPainter
                  GPainter @KarlBantleman last edited by

                  Hiya,

                  The alternative tag is a good start but you may want to do some more reading I'll put some links below. It's easier to try to make unique content or have a structure like www.example.com/us which may be an easier short term until you've got enough content for a .com site.

                  http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/19032/can-duplicate-content-on-a-com-and-a-co-uk-site-impact-google-ranking

                  http://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-on-multinational-sites

                  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192#3

                  I always find it nicer to formulate your own answers and learn a bit along the way so I help the above helps you do that.

                  KarlBantleman 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • KarlBantleman
                    KarlBantleman last edited by

                    Thanks Chris,

                    So would you implement the rel=alternative href=x tag then?

                    GPainter 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • GPainter
                      GPainter last edited by

                      A similar question was posted not so long ago there are some great points in it worth a look - http://moz.com/community/q/international-web-site-duplicate-content

                      Florin Birgu brings some fantastic points up and I'll be they answer your question, if you're still stuck let us know and i'm sure we can help you 🙂

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      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.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • SAIM_Marketing

                        Duplicate Content and Subdirectories

                        duplicate content subdirectory directories

                        Hi there and thank you in advance for your help! I'm seeking guidance on how to structure a resources directory (white papers, webinars, etc.) while avoiding duplicate content penalties. If you go to /resources on our site, there is filter function. If you filter for webinars, the URL becomes /resources/?type=webinar We didn't want that dynamic URL to be the primary URL for webinars, so we created a new page with the URL /resources/webinar that lists all of our webinars and includes a featured webinar up top. However, the same webinar titles now appear on the /resources page and the /resources/webinar page. Will that cause duplicate content issues? P.S. Not sure if it matters, but we also changed the URLs for the individual resource pages to include the resource type. For example, one of our webinar URLs is /resources/webinar/forecasting-your-revenue Thank you!

                        Technical SEO | | SAIM_Marketing
                        0
                      • tgwebmaster

                        Getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as duplicate pages and duplicate page titles can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what might I be missing?

                        I am getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as reporting both duplicate pages and duplicate page titles on crawl results, I can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what am I be missing?  Has anyone else had a similar issue, how was it corrected?

                        Technical SEO | | tgwebmaster
                        0
                      • Marvellous

                        How much difference does .co.uk vs .com for SEO make?

                        My Website has a .com domain. However I have noticed that for local businesses all of them have a .co.uk (UK business) TLD (check plumbers southampton for example). I have also noticed that on checking my serp rankings, I'm on page 1 if searched on Google.com but page 2 if searched on google.co.uk. Now being UK based I would assume most of my customers will be redirected to google.co.uk so I'm wondering how much of an impact this actually makes? Would it be worth purchasing .co.uk domain and transferring my website to that? Or run them both at the same time and set up 301 direct on my .com to .co.uk? Thanks

                        Technical SEO | | Marvellous
                        0
                      • Lina500

                        How does Google view duplicate photo content?

                        Now that we can search by image on Google and see every site that is using the same photo, I assume that Google is going to use this as a signal for ranking as well. Is that already happening? I ask because I have sold many photos over the years with first-use only rights, where I retain the copyright. So I have photos on my site that I own the copyright for that are on other sites (and were there first). I am not sure if I should make an effort to remove these photos from my site or if I can wait another couple years.

                        Technical SEO | | Lina500
                        0
                      • DHS_SH

                        Duplicate Content Issues on Product Pages

                        Hi guys Just keen to gauge your opinion on a quandary that has been bugging me for a while now. I work on an ecommerce website that sells around 20,000 products. A lot of the product SKUs are exactly the same in terms of how they work and what they offer the customer. Often it is 1 variable that changes. For example, the product may be available in 200 different sizes and 2 colours (therefore 400 SKUs available to purchase). Theese SKUs have been uploaded to the website as individual entires so that the customer can purchase them, with the only difference between the listings likely to be key signifiers such as colour, size, price, part number etc. Moz has flagged these pages up as duplicate content. Now I have worked on websites long enough now to know that duplicate content is never good from an SEO perspective, but I am struggling to work out an effective way in which I can display such a large number of almost identical products without falling foul of the duplicate content issue. If you wouldnt mind sharing any ideas or approaches that have been taken by you guys that would be great!

                        Technical SEO | | DHS_SH
                        0
                      • Ditigal_Taylor

                        Duplicate Content

                        We have a ton of duplicate content/title errors on our reports, many of them showing errors of: http://www.mysite.com/(page title) and http://mysite.com/(page title) Our site has been set up so that mysite.com 301 redirects to www.mysite.com (we did this a couple years ago). Is it possible that I set up my campaign the wrong way in SEOMoz? I'm thinking it must be a user error when I set up the campaign since we already have the 301 Redirect. Any advice is appreciated!

                        Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor
                        0
                      • Jom

                        Duplicate Content and URL Capitalization

                        I have multiple URLs that SEOMoz is reporting as duplicate content.  The reason is that there are characters in the URL that may, or may not, be capitalized depending on user input. A couple examples are: www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-rent www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-rent There are currently thousands of instances of this on the site. Is this something I should spend effort to try and resolve (may not be minor effort), or should I just ignore it and move on?

                        Technical SEO | | Jom
                        0
                      • cmjolley

                        Squarespace Duplicate Content Issues

                        My site is built through squarespace and when I ran the campaign in SEOmoz...its come up with all these errors saying duplicate content and duplicate page title for my blog portion. I've heard that canonical tags help with this but with squarespace its hard to add code to page level...only site wide is possible. Was curious if there's someone experienced in squarespace and SEO out there that can give some suggestions on how to resolve this problem? thanks

                        Technical SEO | | cmjolley
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.