Duplicate Content

[Guyguy501]

We have 2 websites with different URL's. (example.co,uk and different_url,ie) One is a .co.uk geo targeted at UK and a .ie targeted at Ireland. Both sites have identical structure and content. Would Google see this as duplicate content and penalise us?

Thanks

[goodroi]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

I want to make sure I am understanding this correctly, you asking if identical websites hosted on different domains but with duplicate content, duplicate design, and duplicate structure would trigger Google's duplicate filter? Ummm ... why wouldn't it? Is there anything different about these sites other than the domain name?

The good news is that Google's duplicate content review isn't really a penalty, it is more of a filter. Google does not like to be repetitive in the serps because users want options and different choices to satisfy their search intent. So Google will pick one of your sites to include in the serps and the other will be filtered out of that serp. Google is not perfect and they might end up showing your .co.uk domain in the Ireland serps especially if your .co.uk domain has all of the backlinks and your .ie domain has no backlinks.

PS If you want to show off your linguistic skills, you could add a bit of Gaelic to the .ie domain and if you add enough it could differentiate enough to get past Google's duplicate content review . For example the Gaelic word for Englishman is bastaird :)

[FranticFish]

I've been looking at a site that has a US/world .com and UK .co.uk and where hreflang tags were correctly implemented and WMT/GSC correctly set up.

Because the .com is much older and stronger than the .co.uk it does still cannibalise the UK site's traffic to some extent.

[Guyguy501]

Hi goodroi and thanks for your prompt reply. In answer to your question the only difference is that are branded differently, however as stated everything else is the same.

thanks

Sean

[not2easy]

Welcome to the Forums Guyguy501! Another webmaster here was running into something similar in planning a move to two domains. Looking into that took me to Google's hreflang information page: [support.google.com...]

Using the hreflang metatag can help avoid problems with the duplicate content by using the correct format to serve "en-au" or "en-ie" users. As they tell you there, you can add the tags to different pages in subdomains or domains and those results will be shown to people whose browsers have those language preferences set.

[goodroi]

Careful with hreflang, Google tends to put low value in it because too many websites have inaccurate hreflang. For example an American launching a new site running on Wordpress and downloading a free Wordpress template designed by a German company and never changing the language from hreflang from German to English. This is a very common type of problem that Google encounters.

[rainborick]

You won't have any problems with duplicate content. The Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) will let Google differentiate between them and serve the appropriate page based on the user's location.

The <link rel="alternate" hreflang="?"> tag tells the search engines you offer the same content in a language that differs from the page on which the tag resides. To have Google respect this tag, you must place a reciprocal <link rel="alternate"> tag on the page that is the target of the 'href' attribute of the first page's <link rel="alternate"> tag.. In other words, the two pages must point at each other with <link rel="alternate"> tags using the appropriate 'hreflang' attribute. goodroi is correct that Google doesn't automatically respect on-page language declarations in HTML mark-up, but it's always best practice to use it and make sure its correct for the page content's dominant language.