Does hreflang restrain my site from being penalized for duplicated content?
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I am curently setting up a travel agency website. This site is going to be targeting both american and mexican costumers. I will be working with an /es subdirectory. Would hreflang, besides showing the matching language version in the SERP´s, restrain my site translated content (wich is pretty much the same) from being penalized fro duplicated content? Do I have to implement relcannonical?
Thank ypu in advanced for any help you can provide.
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Hi!
Hreflang (plus geotargeting domain to US and /es subfolder to Mexico on Google Webmaster Tools > Settings), will make that your US based users will see the US targeting URLs in Google.com, and the Mexican will see the ones targeting them in Google.com.mx.
Regarding the content that will not be translated in Spanish, but still published in the /es subfolder, yes, you will have to canonicalize the duplicated content under /es toward its corresponding "American" URL.
Hreflang, in fact, is not meant to solve duplicated content issues, just visualization in SERPs. For that reason, as Google itself finally explained, the rel="canonical" must be used.
Said that, don't worry! Even if the canonical is implemented, the hreflang will still making Google to show the /es URL of the not translated pages.
On the other hand, though, it is not wise to not localize everything in Spanish, also because - let's be honest - who in Mexico is using English for searching in Google.com.mx?
P.S.: I was rereading your question before clicking "Post Response", and now I have a doubt. When you write:
Would hreflang, besides showing the matching language version in the SERP´s, restrain my site translated content (wich is pretty much the same) from being penalized fro duplicated content?
Do you mean: "The content is translated but - well - it's the same as the English". If that is the case (but I don't think this interpretation is correct), then you don't have to implement any canonical (if not for others reasons), because the content is the "same", but in another languages, hence different.
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You're going to get a variety of responses on this but in my experience you should:
a) implement rel canonical.
b) not expect to be "penalised" for duplicate content
I had the same site up on two domains for years with .com and .com.au - duplicate content, both ranking well. We have other clients doing the same on .com, .co.uk and .com.au - all with the exact same site and all ranking 40/50+.
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