Hi All,
We are working with an international brand that owns several domains across the EU and in North America. Our team is in the process of setting up international targeting using sitemaps to indicate alternate language pages. This is being done to prevent North American pages from being served in the UK, Spain pages from being served in Portugal, or any other combination of possibilities...
Currently we are mapping duplicate or “equivalent” pages and defining them as rel="alternate" on their respective sitemaps. The problem is, it’s not always explicitly clear what Google considers “equivalent.”
1. In this instance, URL structures vary by domain,
2. in most cases the content is similar (but unique),
3. the landing page templates vary is design and functionality,
4. and lastly, services often contain nuances that make them slightly different from one another (Professional Liability Insurance vs Professional Indemnity Insurance).
All things considered, these pages are offering the same service, but are vastly different (see above).
Q: Is it appropriate to use these attributes to serve the correct language / regional URL to searchers?
Q: Is there a rule of thumb on what should be considered an "equivalent" page?
Thanks All,
Paul