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.
Duplicate titles from hreflang variations
- 
					
					
					
					
 Hi, I am working on a large global site which has around 9 different language variations. We have setup the hreflang tags and referenced the corresponding content as follows: (We have not implemented a version X-default reference, as we felt it was not necessary) Using DeepCrawl and Search Console, we can see that these language variations are causing duplicate title issues. Many of them. My assumption was that the hreflang would have alleviated this issue and informed Google what is going on, however i wanted to see if anyone has any experience with this kind of thing before. It would be good to understand what the best practice approach is to deal with the problem. Is it even an issue at all, or just the tools being over-sensitive? Thank you in advance. 
- 
					
					
					
					
 Aha I see! That makes some sense. If the products are 'branded' and therefore the name never changes in any language, you have two options Let's imagine you are selling a branded air conditioning unit, with the made-up name of GreenAir (maybe it's more economical and uses less electricity, thus the name from the 'green movement') You could just leave it duplicate: - EN: GreenAir | GreenWave Solutions
- FR: GreenAir | GreenWave Solutions
 Or you could add more contextual info, which would be better: - EN: GreenAir Environmental Air Conditioning Unit | GreenWave
- FR: GreenAir Unité de Climatisation Environnementale | GreenWave
 I know, I know - my French sucks (actually that's from Google Translate). But still, you can see that - you could add more in there. The hurdle for you will be, what is required in terms of costs to deploy to that level of complexity? From a straight-up SEO POV, I stand by my preference. But once mass translation work is factored and targeted, dev-based implementation... you may feel otherwise! 
- 
					
					
					
					
 Hi, Thank you for taking the time to respond. I would tend to agree with your point that the title tags should be written in the necessary language, however the the duplicate title tags are all branded products with heritage and reputation, which will not change no matter what the language is. What are your thoughts on this? Nick 
- 
					
					
					
					
 I think it is an issue because, people browsing your site in other languages will have the wrong language title displayed in their browser tabs if they are multi-tab browsing! The title tag is still one of the important ones for SEO, nothing has really come along to replace it A businesses' ambitions in terms of an international roll-out, are to break into new (foreign) international query-spaces and get extra traffic (especially from Google, or leading search engines in other nations like Yandex and Baidu). Google's ambitions (when adding your international pages to their index) are that their audience can break onto other areas of the web which (due to the language barrier) were previously closed to them. But they want your content to then be 'tailored' to their international audiences, traffic which Google has no obligation to send your way. Google wants good UX for their searchers, so that Google remains top-dog in the search world The less tailored your international roll-out is, the more shallow it is (with more pieces missing), the less confident Google will be. They will be less confident that sending their users to you will result in positive search-sentiment Every piece of the jigsaw which you are missing, counts against you. It makes your international roll-out look more like a quick Google-translate powered land-grab, and less like an authentic international roll-out My question to you is, when you identify a bad signal - why carry on sending it to Google? Search is a competitive environment. If there are thing you won't do, others will 
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
- 
		
		Moz ToolsChat with the community about the Moz tools. 
- 
		
		SEO TacticsDiscuss the SEO process with fellow marketers 
- 
		
		CommunityDiscuss industry events, jobs, and news! 
- 
		
		Digital MarketingChat about tactics outside of SEO 
- 
		
		Research & TrendsDive into research and trends in the search industry. 
- 
		
		SupportConnect on product support and feature requests. 
Related Questions
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Canonical or hreflang?
 I have four English sites for four different countries, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and I want to share some content between the sites. On the pages that share the content, which is essentially exactly the same on all 4 sites, do I use the hreflang tags like: or do I add a canonical tag to the other three pointing to the "origin", which would be the UK site? I believe it is best practice to use one or the other, but I'm not sure which make sense in this situation. Technical SEO | | andrew-mso0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Problems with Meta Title on Bing
 On the Bing search engine, it isn't showing the actual meta title we have for a website. It's showing something different. However, the correct meta title is showing on the Google search engine. Has anyone had the same issue? Has anyone been able to fix this issue? Thanks for your help! Technical SEO | | Harrison.Stickboy0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Duplicate title while setting canonical tag.
 Hi Moz Fan, My websites - https://finance.rabbit.co.th/ has run financial service, So our main keywords is about "Insurance" in Thai, But today I have an issues regarding to carnonical tag. We have a link that containing by https://finance.rabbit.co.th/car-insurance?showForm=1&brand_id=9&model_id=18&car_submodel_id=30&ci_source_id=rabbit.co.th&car_year=2014 and setting canonical to this url - https://finance.rabbit.co.th/car-insurance within 5,000 items. But in this case I have an warning by site audit tools as Duplicate Page Title (Canonical), So is that possible to drop our ranking. What should we do, setting No-Index, No-Follow for all URL that begin with ? or keep them like that. Technical SEO | | ASKHANUMANTHAILAND0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		How does link juice flow through hreflang?
 We want to use the hreflang tag on our site (direct users searching for the Spanish version of spanishdict.com to spanishdict.com/traductor). Before doing so, we were wondering how link juice flows through hreflang? Any insight or resources on this would be very helpful. Thanks! Technical SEO | | CuriosityMedia0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		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 | | tgwebmaster0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		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 | | Jom0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		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 | | cmjolley0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Duplicate canonical URLs in WordPress
 Hi everyone, I'm driving myself insane trying to figure this one out and am hoping someone has more technical chops than I do. Here's the situation... I'm getting duplicate canonical tags on my pages and posts, one is inside of the WordPress SEO (plugin) commented section, and the other is elsewhere in the header. I am running the latest version of WordPress 3.1.3 and the Genesis framework. After doing some testing and adding the following filters to my functions.php: <code>remove_action('wp_head', 'genesis_canonical'); remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');</code> ... what I get is this: With the plugin active + NO "remove action" - duplicate canonical tags Technical SEO | | robertdempsey
 With the plugin disabled + NO "remove action" - a single canonical tag
 With the plugin disabled + A "remove action" - no canonical tag I have tried using only one of these remove_actions at a time, and then combining them both. Regardless, as long as I have the plugin active I get duplicate canonical tags. Is this a bug in the plugin, perhaps somehow enabling the canonical functionality of WordPress? Thanks for your help everyone. Robert Dempsey0
 
			
		 
			
		 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				