"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to Google Ads costs
-
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice.
Scenario
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains.Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default":<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" />Naturally this si reflected in ""Duplicate without user-selected canonical” .
Issue
We create the same ad in Google Ads for 2 domains. So the content is mostly identical, ads are identical, target URLs differ only in domain. Yet Google Ads “Quality score” is different (10/10 vs. 6/10) and “Landing page experience” is very different (Above average vs. Average). Some members of our team think lower “Landing page experience” increases the Google Ads costs, which I personally don't believe, but I want to double check.Question: Can “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” issue decrease the “Landing page experience” rating and as result can it cause higher Google ads costs?
Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.
-
Hi Alex
I think there's likely two issues here - the SEO one, and the PPC/Ads one.
Hi Alex
Google Ads doesn't particularly care about duplication or indexing, so you can have variants for this purpose that are simply noindex and not linked to on your site. Of course it's also find to use pages that exist as international SEO variants, but it's not necessary to do so.
So, for the PPC issue - I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that landing page experience will affect your cost. However, it isn't related to "duplicate without user-selected canonical" - instead, it's a separate algorithm that figures out whether the ad and the page are relevant to each other. A PPC consultant would be the right person to talk to this about.
For the SEO issue - it sounds like Google maybe isn't respecting your hreflang tags, for it to be flagging them as duplicates. This could be because their content is too similar - even if it's in the same language, it should have localisations for Google to respect it as meaningfully different. Alternatively, it could be because the markup is incomplete.
If you do decide to use canonical tags, each localised page should canonical to itself, whilst keeping the existing hreflang markup pointing to translated versions. Canonical tags can be a good way of sweeping up any variants within a localisation (e.g. UTM tags).
Hope that helps!
Tom
-
Anyone? We are willing to spend some bucks to get a profound answer on this.
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 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.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved I have a "click rate juice" question would like to know.
Hello I have a "click rate juice" question would like to know. For example. I created a noindex site for a few days event purposes. Using a random domain like this: event.example.com. Expecting 5000+ clicks per day. Is it possible to gain some traffic juice from this event website domain "example.com" to my other main site "main.com" but without exposing its URL. Thought about using 301 redirecting "example.com" to "main.com". But it will reveal the example-b.com to the general public if someone visits the domain "example.com". Also thought about using a canonical URL, but it would not be working because the event site is noindex. or it would not matter at all 🤔 Wondering if there is a thing like this to gain some traffic juice for another domain? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blueli0 -
Canonical urls - do my web pages need them?
Hello, I'm going round in circles with this issue, so hopefully someone can help... The Moz crawl of my website lists a number of pages as "missing canonical url". The pages are all different and do not have similar content. Do I need to add a canonical url to each page? My agency quoted the following (x referencing this page: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/consolidate-duplicate-urls) list itemYou would use Canonical URLs if: list item"...you have a single page that's accessible by multiple URLs, or different pages with similar content (for example, a page with both a mobile and a desktop version), Google sees these as duplicate versions of the same page." list itemThis is not the case here and so we would not propose to change anything. We could add Canonical URLs if the client feels that it is critical which occurs an additional cost. Any help / advice much appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
What are the best advertising platforms for B2C?
Recently, Google ads stop being as effective. Same ads, cost, and web pages, but not getting the same results. Our budget is $4500/mo and need to get at least $25,000 in sales before increasing the budget. What ad platforms have you had success with?
Paid Search Marketing | | seotools4me0 -
PPC: how to get rid of an ad appearing on a keyword we don't want?
Hi, Our ad on Google Ads is appearing for a search we don't want. it isn't in our search keywords and when i try and ad it to our negative ones, we get the error " You cannot exclude keywords that are targeted " which i assume means that google thinks we are bidding on it? We have a selection of broad phrase matches so i can only think that this is where it's coming from? Do you have any tips on tracking down which keyword is generating this ad and how we can turn it off? (we don't want to pay for clicks on this search if possible!) Btw - i have turned off each keyword in turn to test it = nothing. have then paused the whole campaign = gets rid of the ad (but this is our most successful campaign so i can't just turn it off). Any advice super super welcome. thank you!
Paid Search Marketing | | Fubra1 -
Adwords Duplicate Keywords with Different Match Types - Good or Bad?
If you have the following keywords in an Ad Group advertising for a product, let's for example call it "target" product [target product] "target product" +target +product I've found that the exact match keyword has the highest conversion rate in almost all circumstances. So it would make sense to have a higher max bid on the exact match then phrase or broad batch. Even with lots of negative search terms to maximize conversion on the broader matches, if the bid is the same as exact match, the cost per conversion will be much higher (too high.) However in chatting with an Adwords Support Rep (on a different matter) they stated after looking through my account at the end of the chat: " duplicate keywords will impact on quality score. your all keywords will compete with each other" However many of the ad groups in question these duplicate keywords have quality score of 9 and 10. So obviously if there is an effect it seems it may be minimal. I thought it was pretty common for people to bid higher on more exact match and lower on more broad match. What's the real story here? Was this support rep not seeing the big picture?
Paid Search Marketing | | JCCMoz1 -
How I can saw Handling Price for Google Shopping Feed
Hello, We have customized product and we charge Handling Charge + Shipping Charge for blow $9.99 price products, other products not have Handling Cost but only Shipping Cost. If I apply Shipping Price from Merchant Center Shipping Table then it is required to mention Shipping Cost + Handling Cost at Shipping attributes? Because we saw total Shipping Cost including with Handling Cost as given below, | Subtotal | £6.99 Super Saver (delivered on or before Fri,Oct 9th 2015)( £7.95 ) + Handling Fee (£3.00): | £10.95 | ** Grand Total£17.94** (Incl. VAT) In this case how I can saw Handling Price ?? Thank you in advance.
Paid Search Marketing | | CommercePundit0 -
Google Product Ads
Hi,
Paid Search Marketing | | ChrisHolgate
I was wondering if I could ask is perhaps someone could give me some clarification as to how the amount we bid on Google Product Ads reflects the product positioning on Google Shopping? We have a Google Product Data Feed which is then linked up to our Adwords account so that we can determine a PPC bid amount. In instances like this it doesn't seem to make sense that one person may be paying 10ppc and another 20ppc when the buyers criteria for sorting merchants was purely down to the price. Since the buyer has the option to sort their products in price from minimum to maximum the sort order cannot be manipulated by Google based on the amount the merchant was paying. As such, how is determining a cost per click figure relevant when the customer is searching by base price low > high on Google Shopping? Surely I should just set the limit to £0.01 and rely on the customer determining the sort order (which ultimately will lead to a higher conversion rate) than allowing Google to skew the results based on bidding 20-30 times this amount? I should state that I'm in the UK. I do realise that a high PPC amount will increase our chance of exposure on standard search pages but my question does relate solely to results listed on Google Shopping. Thanks for your help! Chris0 -
Is it really worth it to invest on Facebook Ads?
Hi Guys, I've been wondering if it is really worth it to invest in facebook ads, there have been mixed reviews lately from the positive: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/02/facebook-bigger-google/ to the more negative: http://www.seobook.com/facebook-vs-google-no-contest/ The industry I am trying to optimize for is gadget related, I've been running some adwords on it but I would want to venture on the social bandwagon which is facebook. Any Ideas? Suggestions? Reactions? Experiences you can share so I can come up with a better decision? Thanks A Bunch!
Paid Search Marketing | | UPform50
