Same content pages in different versions of Google - is it duplicate>

[pauledwards]

Here's my issue I have the same page twice for content but on different url for the country, for example:

www.example.com/gb/page/

and

www.example.com/us/page

So one for USA and one for Great Britain. Or it could be a subdomain gb. or us. etc.

Now is it duplicate content is US version indexes the page and UK indexes other page (same content different url), the UK search engine will only see the UK page and the US the us page, different urls but same content.

Is this bad for the panda update? or does this get away with it? People suggest it is ok and good for localised search for an international website - im not so sure.

Really appreciate advice.

[pauledwards]

Thanks guys, good stuff

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi there,

While it is ok to have substantially similar content reachable from different URLs intended for different geo-located audience, taking few precautions will minimize the confusion for both the search engines and the visitors. Here is what Google has to say in this regard:

"If you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language but in different locales, it's a good idea to provide a generic URL for geographically unspecified users. For example, you may have specific URLs for English speakers in Ireland (en-ie), Canada (en-ca), and Australia (en-au), but want all other English speakers to see your generic English (en) page, and everyone else to see the homepage. In this case you should specify the generic English-language (en) page for searchers in, say, the UK. You can annotate this cluster of pages using a Sitemap file or using HTML link tags like this:

For language/country selectors or auto-redirecting homepages, you should add an annotation for the hreflang value "x-default" as well:
"

For more info:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077&topic=2370587&ctx=topic

&

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html

Hope the above help.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi

[simon_realbuzz]

This is the very situation where Google recommends that you use hreflang in order that you identify what version is intended for what country.

In your situation you need to implement in the head of your page

This tells Google that the gb version is intended for a UK audience and the US version is for aUS audience. This will help you avoid any duplication issue and should see that the correct URL version of your article is served in the right country SERPs.